1781 Built as a wooden barque rigged fast sailing dispatch vessel for the East India Company, London.
Completed under the name ANTELOPE.
Tonnage 170 tons (bm).
Lloyds Register of 1782 states that the East India Company’s packet ANTELOPE was a ship of 280 tons burthen, built at Newbury, USA in 1779, she mounted 8 – 6pdrs. and classed A1 after a survey in January 1782.
Her master given as H.Wilson. She was recently bought by the EIC.
1 February 1782 under command of Capt Wilson she sailed from Gravesend for Falmouth.
16 September 1782 sailed on her maiden voyage from England under command of Capt. Henry Wilson for England to Calcutta and the Philippines.
20 July1783 she sailed from Macao on a surveying voyage with on board 51 persons.
09 August 1783 the ANTELOPE struck a reef on one of the Pelew Islands (now Palau Islands), the crew were saved and after a stay at Ulong Island they sailed home after building a small ship, which they named
OROOLONG.
It is given in a book by Ernest S. Dodge, Beyond the Capes, which the American mariner Amasa Delano gives that the ANTELOPE was the former American ship FRANKLIN.
A merchantmen FRANKLIN under command of Capt. John Angus, loaded with 500 hogshead of tobacco from Philadelphia for L’Orient, France, took during the voyage a British brig but a week afterwards she was captured by the English privateer NEW ADVENTURE from Weymouth. FRANKLIN carried an armament of 22 long nines.
With a prize crew on board was she brought to Portland roads. 11 November 1781 arrived at Portsmouth.
Palau 1983 20c sg34/41 scott? (she is the vessel in the vignette on all of these stamps.)
Source: Ships of the East India Company by Rowan Hackman.