Arniston (East Indiaman)

The Arniston was an East Indiaman that was wrecked on 30 May 1815 during a storm at Waenhuiskrans, near Cape Agulhas, South Africa, with the loss of 372 lives – only six on board survived. She had been requisitioned as a troopship and was underway from Ceylon to England on a journey to repatriate wounded soldiers from the Kandyan Wars.

Controversially, the ship did not have a marine chronometer on board, a comparatively new and expensive navigational instrument that would have enabled her to determine her longitude accurately. Instead, she was forced to navigate through the heavy storm and strong currents using older, less reliable navigational aids and dead reckoning. Navigational difficulties and a lack of headway led to an incorrect assumption that Cape Agulhas was Cape Point. Consequently, the ship was wrecked when the captain headed north for St Helena with the incorrect belief the ship had already passed Cape Point.

Overview
East Indiamen operated under charter or licence to the Honourable East India Company, which held a monopoly granted by Queen Elizabeth I of England for all English trade between the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn. The Arniston was built at the Barnard yard at Deptford on the Thames and launched in 1794. She was owned by Messrs Borradailes of London, and managed by John Wedderburn (from 1794 to 1808) then Robert Hudson (from 1809 to 1813).

The Arniston was heavily armed, with her fifty-eight guns making her the equivalent of a Royal Navy fourth-rate ship of the line. A classification of "ship of the line" — a class of ship that later evolved into the battleship — meant that a ship was powerful enough to stand in a line of battle and explained why these ships of commerce were sometimes mistaken for men-o-war. The armament was necessary for the ship to protect herself and her valuable cargo from pirates and commerce raiders of other nations during long voyages between Europe and the Far East.

She had three decks, a length of 176 ft, a keel of 143 ft and a breadth of 43 ft. She measured 1468 tons, so like other East Indiamen, was slow and unmanoeuvrable, but able to carry a large quantity of cargo.

Voyages (1794–1812)
The Arniston sailed from Great Britain to the Far East eight times before her last voyage. On one of her homeward journeys from China, she struck an uncharted rock at -5.76889°N, 105.27861°W, near the island of Pulo Goondy (modern day Pulau Legundi), located just south of Sumatra. She did not suffer any ill effects as a result of this incident however, which is mentioned in journals of the time only for its noteworthiness as a navigation hazard to other shipping.

A more significant event occurred during her third voyage to the Far East, however. On 27 June 1800, the Arniston had just anchored at Benkulen when the 26-gun French privateer Confiance attacked her. The Arniston cut her anchor and gave chase, firing several broadsides into the other ship, but the faster French ship was able to make an escape. On 9 October 1800, another East Indiaman, the Kent, would be less fortunate, being captured after a two-hour battle with the same raider.

Apart from these two incidents, the Arniston's first eight voyages were otherwise uneventful.

St Helena, Madras, and China (1794/1795)
Captain Campbell Marjoribanks:
 * 3 April 1795: Portsmouth
 * 14 April: Tenerife
 * 2 June: St Helena
 * 9 August: Cape of Good Hope
 * 27 September: Madras
 * 14 November: Penang
 * 3 December: Malacca
 * 11 March 1796: Whampoa
 * 23 April: Second Bar
 * 29 June: Macau
 * 20 November: St Helena
 * 1 March 1797: Deptford

China (1796/1797)
On this voyage Arniston sailed under a letter of marque in the name of Captain William Macnamara, and dated 13 May 1797. Her itinerary was:
 * 5 June 1797: Portsmouth
 * 29 August: Cape of Good Hope
 * 9 December: Whampoa
 * 14 February 1798: Second Bar
 * 26 March: Macau
 * 5 August: St Helena
 * 23 October: Long Reach

St Helena, Benkulen, and China (1799/1800)
On this voyage Arniston sailed under a letter of marque in the name of Captain Campbell Marjoribanks, and dated 29 November 1799. Her itinerary was:
 * 7 January 1800: Portsmouth
 * 4 April: St Helena
 * 27 June: Benkulen
 * 29 July: Penang
 * 27 August: Malacca
 * 21 September: Whampoa
 * 29 November: Second Bar
 * 18 January 1801: Macau
 * 15 April: St Helena
 * 17 June: Long Reach

St Helena, Benkulen, and China (1801/1802)
Captain Campbell Marjoribanks:
 * 31 December 1801: Downs
 * 9 March 1802: St Helena
 * 10 June: Benkulen
 * 12 July: Penang
 * 31 August: Whampoa
 * 24 October: Second Bar
 * 11 February 1803: St Helena
 * 26 April: Long Reach

China (1803/1804)
On this voyage Arniston sailed under a letter of marque in the name of Captain James Jameson, and dated 24 March 1804. Her itinerary was: This journey included a passage through the Bass Strait in order to improve an earlier nautical chart of the route.
 * 9 June 1804: Portsmouth
 * 17 August: Rio de Janeiro
 * 14 January 1805: Whampoa
 * 14 February: Second Bar
 * 21 March: Malacca
 * 30 June: St Helena
 * 15 September: Long Reach

China (1805/1806)
On this voyage Arniston sailed under a letter of marque in the name of Captain Peter Wedderburn, and dated 20 March 1806. Her itinerary was:
 * 14 May 1806: Portsmouth
 * 7 August: Cape of Good Hope
 * 10 October: Penang
 * 21 January 1807: Whampoa
 * 4 May: off Lintin Island
 * 1 July: Penang
 * 17 July: Acheh
 * 19 September: Cape of Good Hope
 * 13 October: St Helena
 * 6 January 1808: Lower Hope

Bombay and China (1809/1810)
Captain Samuel Landon:
 * 21 January 1810: Portsmouth
 * 9 April: Cape of Good Hope
 * 26 May: Bombay
 * 1 September: Penang
 * 12 October: Whampoa
 * 29 December: Second Bar
 * 28 May 1811: St Helena
 * 13 August: Long Reach

Bombay and China (1811/1812)
On this voyage Arniston sailed under a letter of marque in the name of Captain Walter Campbell. Her itinerary was:
 * 4 January 1812: Torbay
 * 5 April: Johanna
 * 7 May: Bombay
 * 11 September: Whampoa
 * 4 January 1813: Macau
 * 27 March: St Helena
 * 7 June: Long Reach

Wreck (1815)
The Royal Navy requisitioned the Arniston in 1814 as a troop transport to repatriate soldiers of the 73rd Regiment, who were wounded in the Kandyan Wars in Ceylon, to England. Critically, the ship did not have a chronometer for this voyage, a comparatively new and expensive navigational instrument at the time. Captain George Simpson could not afford the 60–100 guineas for one, and the ship's owners were also unwilling to purchase one, even threatening to replace him with another captain if he refused to set sail without one.

The Arniston sailed from Port de Galle on 4 April 1815 in a convoy of six other East Indiamen, under the escort of HMS Africaine and HMS Victor. Among her 378 passengers were many invalid soldiers and sailors, plus 14 women and 25 children.

During the passage from Ceylon, at one o'clock every day, the ships signalled each other their longitude that they calculated using their chronometers. In this way, the ships were able to compare their respective instruments, and the master of the Arniston was able to learn his longitude too, as long as he remained in the convoy.

On 26 May, while rounding the southern tip of Africa, the Arniston was separated from the convoy in bad weather after her sails were damaged. Without accurate daily longitudinal information from the other ships, the Arniston had to rely instead on older, less accurate navigation methods. Navigation via dead reckoning proved particularly difficult as there were strong ocean currents combined with inclement weather that prevented a fix being obtained for several days via celestial navigation.

On 29 May, land was sighted to the north at 7 am, and given the dead reckoning estimates, was presumed to be the Cape of Good Hope. The ship sailed west until 4:30 pm on 29 May, then turned north to run for St Helena. However the land sighted had in fact been Cape Agulhas (then known as "Cape L'Agullas") and the ship had also not made good headway against the current since this sighting. Compounding these navigational errors, the master had not taken any depth soundings (which would have confirmed his location over the Agulhas Bank), before heading north. Consequently, instead of being 100 mi west of the Cape of Good Hope as presumed, the ship was closing on the reef at Waenhuiskrans near Cape Agulhas. The anchors were unable to hold the heavy ship in the storm, so on 30 May near 4 pm, Lieutenant Brice advised Captain Simpson to ground the ship in order to save the lives of those aboard. Eight minutes later, at about 8 pm, the ship struck rocks half a mile offshore and heeled into the wind. The guns on the opposite side were cut away in a failed attempt to level the ship, which soon started to break up in the waves.

Only 6 men of the 378 people on board survived, after reaching the shore only with great difficulty through the high surf. The following morning, the sternpost was the only part of the vessel still visible. The ship and her passengers had been lost for the price of a chronometer, or as an officer from the same convoy later wrote:

Aftermath
The six survivors buried the bodies found on the beach, then travelled east along the beach, expecting to reach Cape Town. However after four and a half days, they realised their error and returned to the site of the wreck. Here they subsisted off a cask of oatmeal, while trying to effect repairs to the ship's pinnace, which had been washed ashore. They were discovered six days later on 14 June by a farmer's son who was out hunting.


 * Among the victims were: Captain George Simpson, Lieutenant Brice, Lord and Lady Molesworth.
 * The six survivors were: Dr. Gunter (boatswain), John Barrett (carpenter), Charles Stewart Scott (carpenter's mate), William Grung (second class), Gibbs (third class), Robinson (fourth class).

A memorial, a replica of which can be seen today, was erected on the beach by the wife of Colonel Giels, whose four children were lost in the tragedy on their homeward journey, having visited him in Ceylon. The memorial bears the following inscription:

Over time, the seaside village of Waenhuiskrans has become so associated with the wreck, that it too is now known as Arniston. The nearby town of Bredasdorp has a museum dedicated to the wreck. The wreck had a direct influence on the decision to build a lighthouse at Cape Agulhas in 1847–1848.

Thirty seven years later, the 73rd Regiment of Foot suffered hundreds of casualties on this coast once again when HMS Birkenhead was wrecked only 50 mi away at Gansbaai.

Archaeological excavation
The wreck, which lies in about 6 m of water, was surveyed by an archaeological team from the University of Cape Town (UCT) in 1982. The National Monuments Council issued a permit to UCT student Jim Jobling to conduct an underwater survey of the site, as well as a limited excavation. A number of artefacts were recovered, which were donated to the Bredasdorp Shipwreck Museum.