Roselle

Roselle was launched in 1781 in Amsterdam, probably under another name. She entered British records in 1786. She spent much of her career as a West Indiaman, sailing between Leith and Jamaica. A Spanish warship captured her in 1798. Career Roselle first appeared in Lloyd's Register (LR) in 1786. On 21 October 1786, an advertisement appeared in the Edinburgh Evening Courant announcing that Roselle was planning to sail to Jamaica. The Scottish poet Robert Burns had been offered a position as a bookkeeper on a slave plantation in Jamaica that he was considering accepting. Roselle was one of three vessels on which he booked passage, though in the end he did not accept the position. The artist Graham Fagen used the sketch in the advertisement as inspiration of his own print of Roselle for the National Galleries of Scotland. War with France had broken out in early 1793. Captain Robert Liddell acquired a letter of marque on 15 November 1793.