Queen Charlotte (1785 ship)

Queen Charlotte was a British merchant ship launched in 1785 at Stockton for Etches & Co. Between September 1785 and 1788 she made a circumnavigation of the world in company with another ship that the company owned, the King George. The two vessels were engaged in the Maritime Fur Trade in the Pacific northwest. They sold their furs in China and returned to England with cargoes that they were carrying back for the British East India Company (EIC). The EIC then employed her for voyage as a packet, sailing to Madras and Bengal, and return.

In 1785 Richard Cadman Etches and partners, including Nathaniel Portlock and George Dixon, formed a partnership, commonly called the King George's Sound Company, to develop the fur trade. Portlock and Dixon had served in the Pacific on James Cook's third voyage. In September 1785 Portlock, in King George, and Dixon, in the smaller Queen Charlotte, sailed from England. They sailed together for most of their three-year voyage. They crossed the Atlantic Ocean, reaching the Falkland Islands in January 1786, and transited Cape Horn to enter the Pacific Ocean. They reached the Hawaiian islands on 24 May and anchored in Kealakekua Bay (where Cook had been killed in 1779), but did not go ashore. They took on fresh food at other Hawaiian islands and proceeded on to what is now Alaska. Dixson named the Queen Charlotte Islands after his ship. After two years of plying the waters, Portlock and Dixon departed North America, reaching Macao in November 1787.

While King George and Queen Charlotte were in China, the EIC chartered them to take cargoes back to England. Captain Dixon crossed the Second Bar on 7 February 1788, and reached North Island, the northmost of three islands in the bay that formed the principle anchorage of Enggano Island on 14 March. Queen Charlotte then reached St Helena on 18 June, and arrived at The Downs on 18 September.

Captain William Fairfax left Falmouth on 5 March 1793, bound for Madras and Bengal. Queen Charlotte reached St Helena 30 May and the Cape on 23 June, and arrived at Madras on 21 August. She arrived at Calcutta on 2 October. On 14 November she left Bankshall, a general term for the office of harbor-master or other port authority; at Calcutta the office stood on the banks of the Hooghli River. On 26 January 1794 she reached St Helena and on 30 March she arrived back at Falmouth.