India / China: The East Indiaman 'Kent' off Deal, England, c. 1825. William John Huggins (1781-1845)

The Kent was an East Indiaman, a vessel sailing for the British East India Company, and launched in 1820. She completed two voyages to Bombay and China for the Company and was on her third voyage, to Bengal and China, when she was lost at sea in the Bay of Biscay due to a fire. Her captain for all three voyages was Henry Cobb.

East Indiaman was a general name for any ship operating under charter or license to any of the East India Companies of the major European trading powers of the 17th through the 19th centuries. Thus, one can speak of a Danish, Dutch, English, French, Portuguese, or Swedish East Indiaman.

In Britain, the Honourable East India Company itself did not generally own merchant ships, but held a monopoly granted to it by Queen Elizabeth I of England for all English trade between the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn, which was progressively restricted during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

English (later British) East Indiamen usually ran between England, the Cape of Good Hope and India, where their primary destinations were the ports of Bombay, Madras and Calcutta. The Indiamen often continued on to China before returning to England via the Cape of Good Hope and Saint Helena.

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