Marquis of Rockingham (East Indiaman)

The Marquis of Rockingham was an Indiaman, a ship of the East India Company, in service during the eighteenth century.

In late 1775, she was hired to transport three companies of the 32nd Regiment of Foot, along with a number of their families,^[1] to Ireland en route to British North America as part of a force under General Cornwallis. On 21 November it was reported that all baggage was loaded, and she was ordered to Gravesend; she sailed in a convoy of six transports on 10 December, but was driven back by heavy wind.^[2]

On the night of 23 December 1775,^[3] making for the Cove of Cork in a heavy gale, she mistook Robert's Cove for the entrance to the harbour, and was driven onto a lee shore at Reannie's Bay, a few miles distant.^[1]

The master and crew of the ship were drowned, as were about ninety of the passengers. A number of officers and soldiers managed to escape in a flat-bottomed boat; the numbers are unclear, but were variously reported as five officers and twenty men,^[4] four officers and thirty men,^[1] or three officers, thirty men, and two of the ship's crew.^[5] The regimental pay chest and records were also lost in the wreck.^[1]

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b c d} Shipwrecks of Cork Harbour
2. ^ Robson, p.546
3. ^ Tucky gives it as the 22nd, "about 7 o'clock"; the Annual Register gives it as the 23rd, and Robson (p. 547) concurs.
4. ^ Annual Register
5. ^ Tucky

References

• Chronicle in the Annual Register, 1775. p. 187. London: printed for J. Dodsley, 1778. Second edition. (digitised copy of page)
• Shipwrecks of Cork Harbour
• Extracts from "The City and County of Cork Remembered", Francis G. Tucky. [c. 1830]
• The Expedition to the Southern Colonies, 1775-1776, by Eric Robson. In The English Historical Review, Vol. 66, No. 261 (Oct., 1951). JSTOR 555586