The Nicobar was sent to Tranquebar in 1782. She was under the command of Capt. Andreas Christie. Her travel pass (afgangspas) was issued in May 1782.[1] She arrived in False Bay in May 1783 and accepted several additional passengers.[3] Some of the new passengers had just narrowly survived a shipwreck.[4][3]
The Nicobar was wrecked on 11 July 1783, two months after arriving in False Bay, while departing for Bengal. Most of the crew, including several lascars, perished.[5] Only 11 crew members survived.[1]
In 1922, historian George McCall Theal made a note of the wreck in his posthumous History of Africa, saying that she "ran ashore near Cape Agulhas".[6] Two fishermen discovered her wreck off Quoin Point in 1987. Three thousand examples of Swedish plate money were subsequently salvaged from the wreck.[7][3] According to CoinWorld, many of the extant examples of lower-denomination plate money are from the Nicobar.[8]
