10 Facts About East Indiamen

Some East Indiamen chartered by the British East India Company were known as "tea clippers".

English East Indiamen usually ran between England, the Cape of Good Hope and India, where their primary destinations were the ports of Bombay, Madras and Calcutta.

The East Indiamen often continued on to China before returning to England via the Cape of Good Hope and Saint Helena.

East Indiamen carried both passengers and goods, and were armed to defend themselves against pirates.

East Indiamen were the largest merchant ships regularly built during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, generally measuring between 1100 and 1400 tons burthen.

Related searches

East Indiamen grew to encompass more than the trade between England and India, but the ships described in this article are the type used in the 17th to the early 19th centuries to carry the trade.

Many hundreds of Indian-built East Indiamen were built for the British, along with other ships, including warships.

East Indiamen grounded at the Battle of the Basque Roads in 1809, and was burned by a British boarding party after her French crew had abandoned her.

The last of the East Indiamen was reputed to be the Java that became a coal hulk, then was broken up.

Ship named Lalla Rookh, involved in an incident in November 1850 off Worthing, West Sussex, in which many local men died after their rescue boat capsized, was described as an East Indiamen Indiaman bringing sugar and rum from Pernambuco, Brazil.