HMS Etrusco
1789 warship
HMS Etrusco was launched in 1789 at Rhode Island as President Washington. Home Riggs Popham purchased her at Calcutta and transferred to her the name and papers of a previous vessel of his named Etrusco, a Tuscan ship.
Career
Merchantman: Between 1787 and 1793 Popham was engaged in a series of commercial ventures in the Eastern Sea, sailing for the Imperial Ostend Company. During this time he took several surveys and rendered some services to the British East India Company, which were officially acknowledged.
In December 1791 he purchased at Calcutta and fitted out an American ship, President Washington, at a cost of about £20,000. He named his purchase Etrusco, transferring to President Washington the name and papers of his previous ship. She therefore sailed under the flag of the Duke of Tuscany.
Popham sailed Etrusco to China and took on board a cargo valued at £50,000, the property of himself and two merchants, apparently French. He also took on the freight charge, which he valued at £40,000. Etrusco arrived at Ostend in July 1793, where the English frigate HMS Brilliant seized her and then brought her back to England.
The public source identifies “HMS Etrusco” as 1789 warship. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Etrusco and warship.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 17, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q65083425. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1789, 1787, 1793 and 1791.
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This entry incorporates text from “HMS Etrusco” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.