The Merchant Ships That Charged a French Squadron | The East India Company

⚓ On 15 February 1804, sixteen East India Company merchant ships turned in line and bore down on a French squadron led by a 74-gun ship of the line. Forty-three minutes later the French broke off and stood away to the east. A year later one of those same ships went down off Portland with about 260 people. This is the engineering story of the East Indiaman, told through the Earl Camden, the Earl of Abergavenny and the China Fleet at Pulo Aura. Working from David Steel's naval architecture, Gabriel Snodgrass's letter to the directors, Thomas Twining's voyage and William James's naval history, we follow a chain of problems: a tonnage rule that never measured depth, tumblehome, scarce crooked oak, the shipworm, short-lived hulls and merchant gunports. The East Indiaman was a compromise. The deep, full hull that let her carry far more than her paperwork admitted was the same hull that bluffed a French admiral in 1804 and sank under silver and lead in 1805. 🔧 Inside this video: • The Earl of Abergavenny on the Shambles, February 1805 • Why the shipwrights' tonnage rule left out depth of hold • A ship measured at 786 tons that took 1,179 tons aboard • Gabriel Snodgrass, tumblehome and the case for iron knees • Copper sheathing, the frigate Alarm and iron bolts eaten away • Lowjee Nusserwanjee, the Bombay dry dock and Malabar teak • The Batavia and the Dutch VOC yard at Amsterdam • Commanders paid £10 a month who earned thousands from private trade • Nathaniel Dance, Linois and the 43-minute fight at Pulo Aura Salt & Oak takes one object apart like this every week, built from primary sources and arithmetic. Subscribe if that is your kind of naval history. ⚓ At Pulo Aura, was Linois really fooled, or did he make the sensible call against twenty-eight ships when he had expected twenty-three? Make your case in the comments and bring your source. #AgeOfSail #NavalHistory #EastIndiaCompany #MaritimeHistory #NapoleonicWars #SaltAndOak 00:00 The Wreck on the Shambles 01:34 Sixteen Merchant Ships, No Escort 03:09 A Charter but No Big Ships 04:59 The Dutch Answer: The Batavia 07:10 Hired Ships and the Ship's Husband 09:16 The Tonnage Rule That Ignored Depth 11:07 Tumblehome and Iron Knees 13:50 Worm, Copper and Bombay Teak 15:38 Merchant Hulls as Warships 16:41 Who Sailed an East Indiaman 18:24 The Real Pay Was Cargo Space 20:07 Whampoa, Scurvy and the Press Gang 22:19 A Night in Line of Battle 24:05 The Merchant Convoy Attacks 24:47 Why Linois Turned Away 26:58 The Act That Ended the Indiamen 28:13 Outro: One Hull, Two Fates