Lord Hawkesbury (1787 ship)

Lord Hawkesbury was launched in America in 1781, probably under another name. She entered Lloyd's Register in 1787. She made six voyages as a whaler and was lost on the seventh after a squadron of French naval vessels had captured her.

Career
Lord Hawkesbury first appeared in Lloyd's Register in 1787. Her master was T. Delano, her owner A. & B. Champion, and her trade London-Southern Fishery.

1st whaling voyage (1787–1788): Captain Thomas Delano sailed from England on 7 September 1787, bound for South Georgia. He returned on 12 September 1788 with 35 tuns of sperm oil, eight tuns of whale oil, and four hundredweight (cwt) of whale bone (baleen). 

Lord Hawkesbury, Henry Delano, master, may have made an earlier seal hunting voyage to South Georgia. One report has her there in 1786. 

2nd whaling voyage (1788–1789): Captain Delano sailed from England on 14 November 1788. He hunted whales in the Atlantic and returned on 25 August 1789 with 34 tuns of sperm oil and reportedly "the first parcel of ambergris 'by any English whaler'".

3rd whaling voyage (1789–1790): Captain Joshua Coffin sailed from England on 15 October 1789. He hunted whales in the Atlantic and returned to England on 6 December 1790. Lord Hawkesbury brought 76 tons sperm oil and headmatter, and 360 ounces of ambergris, which sold at £19 6s per ounce.

4th whaling voyage (1791–1792): Captain Barnabas Gardner sailed from England on 16 February 1791. He too hunted for whales in the Atlantic and returned to England on 27 April 1792.

The Champions sold Lord Hawkesbury to Daniel Bennett, a leading shipowner of whalers sailing the Southern Whale Fishery. 

5th whaling voyage (1792–1793): Captain William Wilkinson sailed from England on 8 September 1792, bound for the Atlantic and the west coast of Africa. He returned on 4 October 1793. Lord Hawkesbury brought back 55 tuns of sperm oil, 60 tuns of whale oil, 40 cwt of whale bone.

6th whaling voyage (1794): Captain Mackay (or Henry Mackie), sailed from England on 21 January 1794, bound for Walvis Bay. He returned on 29 November with eight tuns of sperm oil, 110 tuns of whale oil, and 75 cwt of whale bone.

Capture and loss
Lord Hawkesbury  set out on a seventh voyage under Captain Mackay. She was lost on 26 May 1796 near the Cape of Good Hope. 

Lord Hawkesbury stopped at Rio de Janeiro in March 1796. Some of the crew had scurvy, and she was in need of refreshments, and calefaction. She was sailing for the whaling grounds at Walvis Bay when on 15 May 1796 at  she encountered a squadron of four large French frigates. These were:

Forte (50 guns; Commander Beaulieu-Leloup)
Vertu (40 guns; Lhermitte)
Seine (40 guns; Latour and later Bigot)
Régénérée (36 guns; Willaumez)

They were part of a larger force under Admiral Sercey. He had taken his force on to Île de France but had left the four frigates to patrol between St Helena and the Cape to intercept and capture East Indiamen of the British East India Company (EIC).

The French pillaged Lord Hawkesbury and put a prize crew on board her consisting of an officer and 13 seamen. They took of almost all of her crew, leaving only two sailors, David Liang and Robert Morrow, and a boy to help the prize crew sail her to Île de France.

On 26 May Lord Hawkesbury was off the east coast of Africa with Morrow at the helm. The French were not paying attention and Morrow succeeded in running her aground Zoetendal's Vlei (), east of Simon's Bay. Although she was wrecked, there were no casualties and Morrow, Liang, and the boy left the Frenchmen in the custody of local Boers. The Englishmen then walked to Cape Town, arriving there on 4 June.

Notes, citations, and references
Notes

Citations

References
Clayton, Jane M. (2014) Ships employed in the South Sea Whale Fishery from Britain: 1775-1815: An alphabetical list of ships. (Berforts Group). 
Stackpole, Edouard A. (1972) Whales: the rivalry between America, France, and Britain for control of the southern whale fishery, 1785-1825. (University of Massachusetts). 
Stanbury, Myra, Kandy-Jane Henderson, Bernard Derrien, Nicolas Bigourdan, & Evelyne Le Touze (2015) "Chapter 18: Epilogue" [online]. In: Stanbury, Myra. The Mermaid Atoll Shipwreck: A Mysterious Early 19th-century Loss. (Fremantle, WA: Australian National Centre of Excellence for Maritime Archaeology and the Australasian Institute for Maritime Archaeology): 235-290. [  [cited 20 Aug 18].
Theal, George McCall, ed., (1897) Records of the Cape Colony: Feb.1793–Dec.1796. (Cape of Good Hope (South Africa): Government of the Cape Colony).

Category:1781 ships
Category:Age of Sail merchant ships of England
Category:Whaling ships
Category:Captured ships
Category:Maritime incidents in 1796