Nicobar (1782 DAC ship)
Nicobar, was an East Indiaman of the Danish Asiatic Company, built at Asiatisk Plads in 1782.
Construction
[edit]The Nicobar was built on the Danish Asiatic Company's own dockyard in 1781.[1] She was the 24th ship launched from Asiatisk Plads.[2]
Career
[edit]
The Nicobar was sent to Tranquebar in 1782. She was under the command of Capt. Andreas Christie. Her travel pass (afgangspas) was issued in May 1782.[1] She arrived in False Bay in May 1783 and accepted several additional passengers.[3] Some of the new passengers had just narrowly survived a shipwreck.[4][3]
The Nicobar was wrecked on 11 July 1783, two months after arriving in False Bay, while departing for Bengal. Most of the crew, including several lascars, perished.[5] Only 11 crew members survived.[1]
In 1922, historian George McCall Theal made a note of the wreck in his posthumous History of Africa, saying that she "ran ashore near Cape Agulhas".[6] Two fishermen discovered her wreck off Quoin Point in 1987. Three thousand examples of Swedish plate money were subsequently salvaged from the wreck.[7][3] According to CoinWorld, many of the extant examples of lower-denomination plate money are from the Nicobar.[8]
References
[edit]- ^ a b c "Enkeltskibser: Nicobar". jmarcussen.dk (in Danish). Retrieved 2 April 2023.
- ^ "Asiatisk Kompagni - Skibene". jmarcussen.dk (in Danish). Retrieved 2 April 2023.
- ^ a b c Stevenson, J (1989-12-03). "Coins: A 43-pound copper plate coin hardly fits the description of pocket change". The New York Times. p. 91.
- ^ Titlestad, M. (2022). Shipwreck Narratives: Out of Our Depth. Switzerland: Springer International Publishing. p. 41.
- ^ Hofmeyr, Isabel; Lavery, Charne; Nuttall, Sarah, eds. (2023). Reading for Water. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9781000937138.
- ^ Theal, George McCall (1922). History of Africa South of the Zambesi. Vol. 3. G. Allen & Unwin Limited. p. 222 – via Google Books.
- ^ Catsambis, Alexis; Ford, Ben; Hamilton, Donny, eds. (2011). The Oxford Handbook of Maritime Archaeology. Oxford University Press. p. 482.
- ^ "Swedish copper plate money from shipwreck in auction". CoinWorld. Retrieved 2025-03-01.