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THE GLOOMY prospects for East India shipping pervading the Jerusalem in the middle of the 1770s lasted barely five years. By the middle of 1779 the Committee of Shipping was facing a shortage of tonnage to carry exports and troops to India, where the struggle with the French and Mysore was becoming a matter of survival. The Court met the immediate shortfall by suspending the 39th by-law and taking up two ships for a fifth voyage. When ships began to arrive from India they brought news from the Presidencies of delays in the despatch of shipping. Immediately the Court gave permission to build on the next ten bottoms. Lioness was one of these. The shortage of ships was so great by the summer of 1780 that the Court advertised for ships of 500 to 1000 tons for one voyage. Eleven ships were taken up, adding almost 8000 tons to that season's shipping. Britain's situation became desperate in December 1780 when the government declared war on the Netherlands. Early in 1781 news reached London that sent shock waves through the India House and the Jerusalem. A whole convoy comprising five outward bound East Indiamen and forty-seven vessels bound to the West Indies had been captured by the combined Franco-Spanish fleet to the north of the Madeiras in August 1780. The realization that for the first time in thirty years the Navy had lost control of the main sea lanes caused panic at Lloyd’s. The Court acted quickly, taking several decisions in one day. The directors exonerated all the commanders and officers of the captured ships and gave the owners leave to build on their bottoms. They consulted the owners of those ships returning from the East and obtained their agreement to dock the ships immediately on their arrival in the river. They empowered the Chairman and Deputy Chairman to buy one or more ships to be employed as they thought suitable and directed them to provide two small fast vessels to carry ‘advices’. At its quarterly meeting in April, the General Court tore up the eighth by-law for the duration of the war and empowered the directors to purchase ships to transport much-needed troops to India, provided they were not allowed to load homeward.
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