One of the finest ships ever built for the Company was the famous East Indiaman _Thames_. Happily that great marine artist of the early nineteenth century, E. W. Cooke, sketched her in all her beauty, and the accompanying illustration shows how she appeared in the year 1829. This was a vessel of 1424 tons, with her general, massive appearance, the strength of her gear, the gun-ports, the decorative stern with its windows—the East Indiaman with all her striking characteristics of picturesque power. A boat hangs in davits on either quarter, the topsails are still single and very deep, with plenty of reef-points, but the hull is certainly unnecessarily cumbrous and clumsy—impressive rather than beautiful, strong rather than fine. But in any case she would have been a pretty tough proposition for a contemporary hostile ship to tackle, especially with such crews as she carried. Compared with her contemporary, the West Indiaman _Thetis_ (which is here shown in the act of getting under way off the Needles), the _Thames_ is a more powerful fighting ship. But the West Indiamen were essentially more suited for trade, and their capacity for cargo was very great. They were mercantile craft pure and simple.
One of the greatest disasters which ever befell any of these East Indiamen was the loss of the _Kent_. This was a fine new ship which had left the Downs on the 19th of February 1825. She was of 1350 tons, so very similar to the _Thames_. She was bound out to China, calling first at Bengal, and in her were travelling officers, troops, women and children of the 31st Regiment, as well as twenty private passengers and a crew of 148 officers and men.
Favoured with a fine north-east wind the _Kent_ made, for her class of vessel, a quick passage down the English Channel, and on the 23rd was out in the Atlantic pitching to the swell. Interrupted occasionally with bad weather the stately ship pursued her way across the Bay of Biscay for another five days, when a heavy gale from the south-west sprang up, and the following morning the weather got worse: the fair wind which had brought them down Channel now headed them and tormented. The bigger sails were taken in, and others were close reefed. Topgallant-yards had to be struck, and so violent was the gale that by the morning of the 1st of March the vessel had to be hove-to under a triple-reefed main-topsail only. In other words, there was only the merest patch of canvas allowed on her.