Hi Rory,

Thanks for the prompt reply, and the information on what you have come up with. I think I have tracked down a few more fragmentary items about the 33rd's voyage. A letter of August 20th from Sir James Craig suggests he plans to retain the 33rd in South Africa until it is clear that Sercey's force of French frigates will not land troops there. Presumably this accounts for the regiment's delay at Cape Town. A newspaper report (from the Calcutta Gazette of February 16 1797) indicates the 33rd arrived at Calcutta a few days earlier on the East India Company ship Lion, which must have been crowded since it carried Lt-Col Sherbrooke and 535 officers and men of the regiment. The 78th arrived in the same convoy, distributed among at least four other ships. The 33rd must have transferred at the Cape, because the Lion, as far as I can tell, was one of the Dutch ships taken at Saldanha Bay by Elphinstone, and so had not come from Britain. I suspect the delay threw off the planned schedule for the voyage, and necessitated them travelling in a later ship rustled up from the available prizes.

I cannot find any record of the arrival at Calcutta of the Princess Charlotte, on which Wellesley may have been travelling, although she definitely made a voyage to Bengal in 1796-97. Besides Elers, there are at least two other published accounts of voyages in the later convoy (which Malcolm escorted in the Fox), and one (which I haven't yet seen), purportedly describes the captain of an East Indiaman playing cricket with Wellesley at Cape Town!