Hudson Bay Company: The Sea Horse

The Sea Horse was built 1782 in Gravesend, on the River Thames for the Hudson Bay Company. She was the third ship of the company that bore the name, the latter one being sold in 1781. The company was responsible for the exploration, development and trade of the Hudson Bay area. They traded with the Native Americans and imported deer skins, furs, feathers, whalebone and blubber etc. In Lloyd’s Registers, the Sea Horse was categorised as a ship, which at that time referred to all first rank sailing vessels with a bowsprit and three or more square rigged masts. She was double boarded, had a burden of 285 tons, with a draught of 14 feet and was armed with sixteen 9 pounder cannon and two 6 pounder carronades. She was classed as A1, meaning a first class ship built with first class materials. On 3 June 1782 the Sea Horse set sail for Hudson Bay on her maiden voyage, under the command of John Richards. She sailed in convoy with two other company ships,

In 1800 she was captured by the ‘Tartar’, a privateer, Captain Le Cocq out of Guernsey, a few days after her departure from Cadiz, ‘where she was fitted out in the completest manner by the Spanish South Sea Company on a voyage to Lima’. The ship and cargo were auctioned at Guernsey on 2 April, when she was described thus, ‘She was formerly the ship Sea Horse, built in the River Thames, near 300 tons, coppered, and pierced for 16 guns’. The cargo consisted of a very considerable assortment of bale goods, consisting chiefly of velvets, silk stockings, satins, silk handkerchiefs, ribbons, laces, broad cloths, white and printed linens, thread and cotton stockings, hats, drugs, books, paper, powder blue, wax and a great variety of other articles. She was bought by Faulder and Co. John Faulder being a signatory to a letter establishing the society of Ship-Owners of Great Britain published in the Naval Chronicle in