Arniston (ship)
Repulse, an East Indiaman from the same period and similar in size to the Arniston
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| History | |
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.svg){kind=small} .svg){kind=small} Great Britain
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| Owner: |
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| Builder: | William Barnard, Deptford |
| Launched: | 1794 |
| Fate: | Wrecked, 30 May 1815 at Waenhuiskrans |
| General characteristics | |
| Type: | East Indiaman |
| Tons burthen: | 1468, or 1433 8⁄94 (bm) |
| Length: |
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| Beam: | 43 ft 3 1⁄2 in (13 m) |
| Depth of hold: | 17 ft 6 in (5 m) |
| Propulsion: | Sail |
| Complement: | 120–140 men |
| Armament: |
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Arniston was an East Indiaman that made eight voyages for the British East India Company (EIC). She was wrecked on 30 May 1815 during a storm at Waenhuiskrans, near Cape Agulhas, South Africa, with the loss of 372 lives – only six on board survived. She had been requisitioned as a troopship and was underway from Ceylon to England on a journey to repatriate wounded soldiers from the Kandyan Wars.
Controversially, the ship did not have a marine chronometer on board, a comparatively new and expensive navigational instrument that would have enabled her to determine her longitude accurately. Instead, she was forced to navigate through the heavy storm and strong currents using older, less reliable navigational aids and dead reckoning. Navigational difficulties and a lack of headway led to an incorrect assumption that Cape Agulhas was Cape Point. Consequently, the ship was wrecked when the captain headed north for St Helena with the incorrect belief the ship had already passed Cape Point.
East Indiamen operated under charter or licence to the Honourable East India Company, which held a monopoly granted by Queen Elizabeth I of England for all English trade between the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn. Arniston was built at the Barnard yard at Deptford on the Thames and launched in 1794.
Arniston was heavily armed, with her fifty-eight guns making her the equivalent of a Royal Navy fourth-rate ship of the line. A classification of "ship of the line" – a class of ship that later evolved into the battleship – meant that a ship was powerful enough to stand in a line of battle and explained why these ships of commerce were sometimes mistaken for men-o-war. The armament was necessary for the ship to protect herself and her valuable cargo from pirates and commerce raiders of other nations during long voyages between Europe and the Far East. Arniston, like other East Indiamen, was slow and unmanoeuvrable, but able to carry a large quantity of cargo.
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Wikipedia