Albion was a full-riggedwhaler built at Deptford, England, and launched in 1798.[3] She made five whaling voyages to the seas around New South Wales and New Zealand. The government chartered her in 1803 to transport stores and cattle, to Risdon Cove on the River Derwent, Tasmania.
On her first voyage, Albion, Eber Bunker, master, left Britain on 20 February 1799, bound for New South Wales. There is some ambiguity about whether she was carrying convicts or not.[lower-alpha 1]Albion arrived in Port Jackson (Sydney), on 29 June 1799,[6] with a cargo of salted pork after a voyage of 3 months and 15 days.
Albion left Port Jackson in September bound for the whale fisheries around New South Wales (NSW) and New Zealand (NZ).[6] She then took 600 barrels of sperm oil off New South Wales and New Zealand between September 1799 and August 1800. At some point Albion sailed to Tahiti at the request of Governor Philip Gidley King. When she returned to Port Jackson she reported having seen "immense numbers of whales".[4]
Albion returned to Britain on 26 March 1802 with a cargo of 155 barrels of whale oil.[8] Shortly before she arrived she reportedly rescued a ship on 19 March at 42°N30°W / 42°N 30°W / 42; -30, i.e., north of the Azores.[5]
In July 1802 Albion again sailed for Port Jackson.[4] The next month the Honourable the Court of Directors of the East India Company announced that they had licensed 19 vessels, Albion, Charming Kitty, and Flirt among them, to sail east of the Cape of Good Hope to engage in whaling in the "Southern Whale Fishery".[9]Albion was at Boa Vista, Cape Verde, on 5 October. In January 1803, she was "all well" at the Bay of Islands, New Zealand.[4][5]
Returning to Port Jackson on 6 July 1803, Albion, Captain Eber Bunker, went on a second whaling expedition along the Australian coast. Bunker discovered the Bunker Islands off the Queensland coast.
Next, the colonial government chartered Albion to carry convicts,[10][11] stores and cattle, and also the leader of the settlement party, 23-year-old Lieutenant John Bowen,[11] as part of the establishment of the first European settlement at Risdon Cove, Tasmania. Albion arrived there on 12 September 1803. (The accompanying ship HMSLady Nelson had arrived about three days earlier. Between them the two ships carried 49 passengers for the new settlement: 21 male convicts, three female convicts, members of the New South Wales Corps, and free settlers and their families.[11]) Albion, although chartered, had been permitted to take whales along the way.[10] In December 1803, she was at New Zealand.[5] She captured three whales and returned 600 barrels of whale oil to Sydney.
Then Albion sailed to New Zealand, leaving Port Jackson on 24 August 1804. She was reported "all well" off the coast of New Zealand in May 1804.[5] She returned to London with 1,400 barrels of whale oil and 13,000 seal skins, arriving in Britain on 3 March 1805.[5]
On 30 March 1806, Albion left again for New Zealand.[5] She arrived at Port Jackson on 19 August[6] under the command of Captain Cuthbert Richardson after a voyage of 4 months and 17 days carrying a cargo of general merchandise for Robert Campbell (1769-1846).[12][13][lower-alpha 2]
On or about 12 October 1806, Albion sailed for the whale "fishery".[19] She was reported "all well" of New Zealand in March 1807.[5] On 13 May, Albion is reported as having returned to Port Jackson from a "cruise" (whaling trip) with "75 tons of sperm oil" and then having sailed again for the whale "fishery" on 27 May "to touch at Part Dalrymple".[20] In September, she was again "all well" off New Zealand.[5]
Albion left for England on 12 November 1808 with a cargo of whale oil.[6] She was at St Helena on 27 February 1809, and left for Rio de Janeiro on 10 March. She returned to England on 20 May.[5]
Albion again left Britain on 9 August 1809, under the command of Captain Philip Skelton.[5] She arrived at Hobart Town, then part of the Colony of New South Wales, with a cargo of general merchandise on 21 December 1809 after a voyage of 3 months and 22 days.[21][22][lower-alpha 3]
Albion's destination after leaving Hobart Town was "the whale fishery",[22] and she was reported as at the Bay of Islands, New Zealand, in February 1810.[26]
Albion was next reported in the Straits of Timor in August 1811, sailing for England with a "full ship" (of whale oil).[27] Other vessels there were Grand Sachem, William Fennings, Richardson, master, and Greenwich, Bristow, master.[28]Albion arrived back in Britain on 17 November.[5] This marked the completion of what was to be Albion's last voyage into Australasian waters.
In 1812 Albion, still under Skelton's command, left on a whaling voyage to Timor. In February 1813, Albion was well in the South Sea fishery, as were Inspector, Baroness Longueville, Cumberland, Good Sachem, Ocean, Thames, and Venus.[29] In August Albion was at Boro (or Bouru), in the Moluccas, with 190 tons of sperm oil. She then returned to Britain, arriving on 12 August 1814.[5]
Albion ceased whaling and instead started trading with the West Indies. Lloyd's Register for 1816 showed her master as P. Skelton, changing to C. Dodds, her owner as Wallace & Co., and her trade as London-Tobago.[30] An item in Lloyd's List in May 1817 reported that Albion had put into New York in December 1816 while on her way from Tobago back to London, but was supposed to sail from New York in April. The same item referred to her master as "late Dodds".[31]
By 1818, Albion was under the command of Brydon, with owner Somes, and trade London-Calcutta.[32] Then in 1819 West replaced Brydon. He sailed her to Mauritius, before she returned to the London-Calcutta trade.[33][34]
Fate
Albion was last listed in Lloyd's Register in 1825,[35] and the Register of Shipping in 1826 with master W.W.West, owner Somes, and trade London-Mauritius.
↑ Clayton and a database of whaling voyages state that she was carrying convicts,[4][5] as does a list of arrivals and departures from Port Jackson.[6] But Bateson, who produced the most complete compendium of convict voyages to Australia, shows no such convict voyage.[7] A different Albion did carry convicts in 1823, 1826, and 1828.
↑ Passengers on this voyage were the said merchant Robert Campbell and his family, who were returning to Sydney,[14] Robert Campbell's nephews – the single Robert Campbell Jnr. (1789-1851)[15][16] and the married George Thomas Palmer (1784-1854),[15] who was coming to New South Wales as a lieutenant in the 61st regiment but with permission to settle as a free immigrant with his new wife. He was also joining his parents, who were already in the Colony (his father John Palmer (1760-1833) was business partner to his uncle),[17]James Milson (1783-1872)[15] a single immigrant farmer from Lincolnshire,[18] and Patrick Purcell (1754-1859)[15] a single immigrant farmer from Kilkenny, Ireland.
↑ The known passengers on this voyage were again George Thomas Palmer (1784-1854) and his wife,[21] a Mr. Cox and a Mr. Shelly,[22] and the merchant Francis Williams (1780-1831)[23] and his Australian-born wife[21] returning to Sydney via Hobart after his having received permission to settle in New South Wales. He had previously been deported in November 1807 by Governor William Bligh, and after sailing from Hobart aboard Union arrived back in Sydney in January 1810.[24] Williams was later convicted of embezzlement from the Bank of New South Wales in 1822. He received a colonial sentence of 14 years transportation and was sent to Newcastle.[25]
Britannia was a 301 burthen ton full-rigged whaler built in 1783 in Bridport, England, and owned by the whaling firm Samuel Enderby & Sons. She also performed two voyages transporting convicts to Port Jackson. She was wrecked in 1806 off the coast of New South Wales.
Active was the French ship Alsace that the Royal Navy captured in 1803. William Bennett purchased her and named her Active, in place of a previous Active that had been lost in January 1803. She then made one whaling voyage for him. Bennett sold her to Robins & Co., and she sailed between London and Buenos Aires. She then sailed on a second sealing voyage. She was lost in 1810.
Eber Bunker (1761–1836) was a sea captain and pastoralist, and he was born on 7 March 1761 at Plymouth, Massachusetts. He commanded one of the first vessels to go whaling and sealing off the coast of Australia. His parents were James Bunker and his wife Hannah, née Shurtleff.
The ship that became Mary Ann was built in 1772 in France and the British captured her c. 1778. Her name may have been Ariadne until 1786 when she started to engage in whaling. Next, as Mary Ann, she made one voyage transporting convicts to New South Wales from England. In 1794 the French captured her, but by 1797 she was back in her owners' hands. She then made a slave trading voyage. Next, she became a West Indiaman, trading between London or Liverpool to Demerara. It was on one of those voyages in November 1801 that a French privateer captured her.
Warren Hastings was built in 1789 at Calcutta, India. Her registry was transferred to Great Britain in 1796. In 1805 she was sold and her new owners renamed her Speke. She made three voyages transporting convicts from Britain to New South Wales. After her first convict voyage she engaged in whaling.
Sydney Cove was built in 1803 at Rotterdam, Netherlands. She made two voyages to New South Wales, during the first of which she transported convicts, and during the second of which she went whale and seal hunting. Her crew's interaction with the Māori at New Zealand sparked the Sealers' War, a long-running violent feud between sealers and whalers on the one hand, and the Māori on the other. She was last listed in 1823.
Britannia was a ship launched at Sunderland in 1783. In 1791 she received a three-year license from the British East India Company to engage in whaling in the South Pacific and off New South Wales. Britannia engaged in a small amount of sealing and whaling during her absence from Britain. She was also employed shuttling between Port Jackson and other ports bringing supplies to the new colonists. Shortly after her return to Britain in 1797 she temporarily disappeared from Lloyd's Register. From 1800 to 1822 she was a Greenland whaler, and then from 1822 to 1837 she was a Southern Whale fishery whaler. Between 1840 and 1844 she was a London-based collier. After a 61-year career, she was no longer listed in 1845.
Janus was launched at New York in 1810. Between 1819 and 1820 she transported female convicts to Port Jackson. Thereafter, she went on a whaling voyage. She later spent some years sailing between Falmouth and Quebec, and was last listed in 1832.
DuBuc was a vessel captured in 1797 and sold that year for mercantile use. She initially became a West Indiaman, but then the whaling company Mather & Co. purchased her. She made four voyages for them, being condemned at Hobart in October 1808.
Alexander was a 301-ton merchant vessel launched at Shields in 1801. She became a whaler and made a voyage to New Zealand and the South Seas whale fisheries for Hurry & Co. She was wrecked while outbound from Liverpool in October 1808.
Cumberland was launched in 1800 and sailed as a West Indiaman until 1807 or 1808 when she was sold to Enderbys. She then made five voyages as a whaler in the British southern whale fishery. Enderbys sold Cumberland and she proceeded to sail between England and Australia. In 1827 she sailed from Hobart and was never seen again. It later transpired that pirates had captured her off the Falkland Islands and killed her crew and passengers.
Rambler was launched in America in 1812. The British captured her in 1813 as she was returning to America from Manila. She then briefly became a West Indiaman. In 1815 she became a whaler in the Southern Fishery. She made four complete whaling voyages and was wrecked on her fifth.
Policy was launched at Dartmouth in 1801. She was a whaler that made seven whaling voyages between 1803 and 1823. On her second whaling voyage, in 1804, she was able to capture two Dutch vessels. On her fourth voyage the United States Navy captured her, but the British Royal Navy recaptured her. She was lost at Tahiti in 1824 on her eighth whaling voyage.
Spring Grove was a Spanish vessel, launched in 1801, that had been taken in prize in 1806 and that her new owners had renamed. She made six voyages as a Southern Whale Fishery whaler before she wrecked in 1824 on the outbound leg of what was to have been her seventh voyage.
Venus was launched at Deptford in 1788 and made 15 voyages as a whaler in the British southern whale fishery. Of 812 whalers in the British southern whale fishery database for which there was data, she had the fifth highest number of whaling voyages. She was last listed in 1823.
Greenwich was launched on the Thames in 1800. Between 1800 and 1813 Samuel Enderby & Sons employed her as a whaler in the British Southern Whale Fishery, and she made four whaling voyages for them. In 1813 the United States Navy captured her in the Pacific and for about a year she served there as USS Greenwich. Her captors scuttled her in 1814.
Brixton was built in the United States of America in 1802, with sources disagreeing on where, and under a different name. The British Royal Navy seized her in 1805 and she was sold in prize. She then traded widely, sailing to the West Indies, Canada, Bengal, Australia, and Russia. Between 1835 and 1842 she made two voyages to the southern whale fishery as a whaling ship, and was last listed in 1842.
Atalanta was launched in Holland in 1795, perhaps under another name. She was captured in 1798, and thereafter traded generally as a British merchantman. She was brig-rigged. Between 1801 and 1804 she made two voyages as a slave ship in the triangular trade in enslaved people, and may have been temporarily captured during the second. She then became a West Indiaman. Next, between 1808 and 1814, she made two voyages as a whaler in Australian and New Zealand waters. After the whaling voyages she traded more widely, especially to the Baltic. She was last listed in 1833.
Harriet was launched in Massachusetts in 1809. The British captured her and on 13 January 1813 a prize court condemned her. New owners retained her name. She became a West Indiaman, and made one voyage to New South Wales. Between 1818 and 1832 she made four complete voyages as a whaler in the British southern whale fishery. She was lost in October 1833 in the Seychelles on her fifth whaling voyage.
Grand Sachem was launched at Newburyport, Massachusetts in 1801. She was registered at Bideford in 1803, but until 1815 sailed from Milford Haven. Between approximately 1803 and 1822, she made eight voyages as a whaler in the British southern whale fishery. She was last listed in 1822 and was broken up in 1826.
Clayton, Jane M (2014). Ships employed in the South Sea Whale Fishery from Britain: 1775–1815: An alphabetical list of ships. Berforts Group. ISBN9781908616524.
Hackman, Rowan (2001). Ships of the East India Company. Gravesend, Kent: World Ship Society. ISBN0-905617-96-7.
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