East India
Company Ships

New Home for eicships.info

This is the new home of eicships.info.

As you may know Andrea has turned to pastures new and rather than allowing this useful resource to disappear I have taken it on and it is now a partner site to threedecks.org. Nothing much has changed, except that the site is now PHP instead of ASP, but the data is as good as it's always been.

There are going to be no updates to the information on this site. However East India Company ships are being added to Threedecks.org regularly and we have now added links from the ships details and search pages to the ship pages on Threedecks.org for those ships we have linked. It will take a while to complete but we will get there in the end.

If you have any questions please contact Cy at [email protected]

The Maritime Service 1600 to 1834

From its first charter in 1600, the English East India Company operated one of the world's most extensive commercial shipping operations in support of its trading enterprises during the colonial period.

The Maritime Service was the company's merchant or mercantile fleet. It was responsible for carrying cargoes outward to the east, returning richly laden with exotic goods which found a ready, and profitable market in Europe.

The East India Company had obtained a monopoly of trade to the east. This was strictly enforced, and no other ships could trade in territory where it had established its bases. The rules were relaxed a little in 1813, and other ships were licensed to trade in some areas, but not in all. For example, it was still only Company ships that were allowed to trade in China.

In 1834 the Company's entire monopoly came to an end, and the Maritime Service was disbanded, although the Company continued to administer its territories in Asia for many years, and ships belonging to many nations were then trading to and from the east.

This website aims to provide some basic information on the many ships and voyages of the East India Company's Maritime Service.

Wreck of the Admiral Gardner

This site also contains a detailed account of the wreck of the ship The Admiral Gardner