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Featured Ship: East Indiaman Ship

East Indiaman: An East Indiaman was a ship belonging to the British East India Company.

East Indiamen, the name generally applied to the ships of the (British) Honourable East India Company during the 18th and 19th centuries. They were often specially designed to carry both passengers and goods and to defend themselves against piracy, and so constituted a special class of ship. In the period of the Napoleonic Wars they were painted to resemble warships, and some carried a sizeable armament. A number of these ships were in fact acquired by the Royal Navy, and in some cases they successfully fought off attacks by the French. One of the most celebrated of these incidents occurred in 1804, when a fleet of East Indiamen and other merchant vessels successfully fought off a marauding squadron commanded by Admiral Linois in the Indian Ocean. The event is dramatised in Patrick O'Brian's novel HMS Surprise.

The shipwreck of one of the largest East Indiamen, the Earl of Abergavenny, is located at Weymouth Bay, in England.

The word is also used as a translation of the Dutch Oostindiëvaarder of the Dutch East India Company.

Wikipedia contributors (2006). East Indiamen. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 22:13, May 6, 2006 from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=East_Indiamen&oldid=34611210.

" large sailing vessel of the type built from the 16th to the 19th century for the trade between Europe and southern Asia. The first were Portuguese and Dutch; English Indiamen appeared late in the 16th century and eventually came to dominate the trade. The ships varied in size from about 400 to 1,500 tons and more; often they were larger than contemporary men-of-war. They were three-masted.'

"east indiaman" Encyclopædia Britannica 2007 Encyclopædia Britannica Online
5 Jan. 2007http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9031776

East Indiaman Ship

An East Indiaman was by far the biggest and most well suited for long voyages. Imagine this behemoth being twice as large as a Fleut and weighing in at 700 tons! Many a pirate would have doubloon $igns in his eyes when he spied this pregnant guppy on the horizon. The maximum crew of 300 was probably employed only after crushing attacks in the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea, and the top gun capacity of 54 was often undercut to save room and weight for more goods. With practices like these, the East Indiaman practically begged to be plundered.