Aeneas

Aeneas was a wooden sailing ship named after the Trojan hero of the Iliad. She was owned by the British government and used to transport troops to garrisons across the British Empire during the Napoleonic Wars. On 23 October 1805 Aeneas was wrecked on the coast of Newfoundland with terrible loss of life. Convoy A large collection of shipping gathered in the English port of Falmouth with the intention of sailing across the Atlantic Ocean in convoy to supplement the garrison in Quebec with soldiers of the 100th Regiment of Foot. In addition to this unit, replacements for regiments already in British North America, the families of the soldiers being sent abroad, several government officials, and numerous private passengers also took passage. The ships were a mix of small warships, government-owned transports, and private merchantmen gathered together with the hope of safety in numbers from the large number of French privateers which were operating against British shipping during the War of the Third Coalition at the time. The disadvantage to this plan was that should some crisis befall the convoy, the damage would be substantially more serious than if it had occurred amongst independently sailing ships. The convoy departed Falmouth on 29 August 1805, expecting to make landfall in Canada sometime towards the end of September.