John Tasker (1742–1800) was a Welsh sea captain and shipowner who became the East India Company's Master Attendant at Bombay (now Mumbai) and purchased the Upton Castle estate in his native Pembrokeshire where he was High Sheriff in 1798.
Arrival in India and early maritime career Seeking his fortune as a free mariner, Tasker was a passenger on the maiden voyage of the East Indiaman Anson and arrived at Bombay on 30 September 1764.List of Free Merchants, Seafaring Men etc constant and not constant at Bombay and Factories Subordinate, 1772: British Library, IOR 0/5/31. He quickly found employment on so-called Country Ships trading along the coast of India and into China, and by 1774 was captain of the Louisa, owned by Governor William Hornby. In 1775 he was paid 10,000 Bombay rupees for carrying East India Company troops from Madras (now Chennai) to Bombay,Lloyd's List, 17 May 1774; Thomas Frognall Dibdin, Reminiscences of a Literary Life, John Major, London, 1836, Vol. I, pp. 16-17. and in December that year he was accompanied by the traveller Abraham Parsons on the Louisa'''s passage southward along the Malabar Coast. Parsons, whose account of the voyage was later published, left Tasker at Honnavar where he took on a cargo of pepper.Abraham Parsons, Travels in Asia and Africa: including… a voyage from Bussora to Bombay and along the western coast of India, Longman Hurst, London, 1808, pp. 220-226.
In the early 1780s he commanded the Shaw Birangore and the Hornby (also owned by the Governor)Lloyd's List, 29 September 1780; Hicky's Bengal Gazette, 5 May 1781. and, while captain of the latter, captured a vessel sailing under Spanish colours near Macao with a cargo of birds' nests. The captive ship was ransomed for two thousand dollars but, as the Hornby had no letters of marque, Tasker was unable to claim her as a prize and surrendered her to the frigate HMS Seahorse whose captain claimed her on behalf of the King.Hosea Ballou Morse, The Chronicles of the East India Company trading to China, 1635-1834, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1926, Vol. II, p. 51.
He was in business on his own account when, in the early 1780s, he obtained government contracts to carry saltpetre, brimstone and rice from the Malabar Coast to Bombay, provided a packet service for the Bengal Presidency, and imported Madeira wine.National Archives of India, PR.1777973, PR.1775566, PR.466165, PR.1777243, PR.1778828; Calcutta Gazette, 12 August 1784, p. 7, and 30 June 1785, p. 7. In 1785 he was living at Calcutta (now Kolkata), where his house adjoined the landing stage known as Ross's Ghat, and was accepting freight on board the Nancy grab bound for Bombay and Surat.Calcutta Gazette, 3 November 1785, p. 3.
Building of the Milford The grab was probably on charter to Tasker but, in partnership with Pestonjee Bomanjee, he had commissioned the building of a 625-ton teak-hulled vessel by the Wadia family of shipwrights at Bombay. Bomanjee was then "the most distinguished and wealthiest of the Parsis" in Bengal and was a brother of the master-shipbuilder Jamsetjee Bomanjee."List of Ships, Brigs, Schooners, Grabs &c, Built for Service of the British Government, the East India Company and Private Merchants, from 1736 to 1840", Parliamentary Papers: Report from the Select Committee on East India Produce, 1840, Vol. VIII, p. 609; Anne Bulley, The Bombay Country Ships, 1790-1833, Curzon Press, Richmond, Surrey, 2000, p. 189. Their vessel was delivered in 1786 and named the Milford after Tasker's original home waters of Milford Haven. She was in almost constant employment in trade with China and Europe for the next 24 years and received her first thorough inspection in 1810 when "it was not found necessary to shift a timber".Ruttinjee Ardeshir Wadia, The Bombay Dockyard and the Wadia Master Builders, Bombay, 1955, p. 183.
In 1787 Tasker gave "a sumptuous entertainment to a number of English gentlemen" on board the Milford at Canton. Among the guests was the Hawaiian prince Kaʻiana, also known as Tyaana, at whose request Tasker ordered all broken victuals to be brought on deck so that Ka'iana could feed the Chinese who had gathered alongside the vessel.William Mavor, An Historical Account of the Most Celebrated Voyages, Travels and Discoveries, Samuel F. Bradford, Philadelphia, 1802, Vol. VIII, p. 309. In October of the following year Arthur Bowes Smyth, surgeon in the First Fleet returning home via China, recorded that Tasker and the Milford were then at Whampoa (now Pazhou).Arthur Bowes Smyth's Journal of a Voyage from Portsmouth to New South Wales, ed. Colin Choat, p. 2020; and see Lloyd's List, 3 April 1789. Tasker may have disposed of his interest in the vessel shortly afterwards.
First return to Wales In 1789, believing that he had accumulated sufficient funds for comfortable retirement, Tasker returned to his native Pembrokeshire and in December purchased the Upton Castle estate for £7,000.Stephanie Barczewski, Country Houses and the British Empire 1700-1930, Manchester University Press, 2027, p. 99; Francis Jones, Historic Houses of Pembrokeshire and their Families, Brawdy Books, 1996, p. 220. He took the waters at Bath in June 1790Bath Chronicle, 1 July 1790, p. 3. but, though able to lend Lord Cawdor £10,000 on mortgage in January 1791,July 1804 copy of original mortgage deed dated 5 January 1791 between John Campbell of Stackpole Court and John Tasker of Upton Castle: Pembrokeshire Record Office, D-ALLEN/5/221. he returned to India later in the year seeking to augment his fortune.Barczewski, Country Houses and the British Empire 1700-1930, p. 100. He left Upton Castle in the hands of his brother-in-law, Rev. John Rees, whom he had presented to the rectory of Nash-cum-Upton (the advowson of which had passed to him with Upton), and engaged Abraham Leach as steward.West Wales Historical Records, Vol. III (ed. Francis Green), Historical Society of West Wales, Carmarthen, 1913, pp. 216-217; Pembrokeshire Record Office, D-TE/6; Barczewski, Country Houses and the British Empire 1700-1930, p. 100.
Around the time when Tasker left Upton Castle, Elizabeth Bishop, sister of Mary Wollstonecraft, came to reside there as governess to some of Tasker's grand-nieces, and she continued there in an unhappy frame of mind for more than three years.Janet Todd, ed., The Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft, Columbia University Press, New York, 2003, pp. 189, 225, 227 and 291. For an account of Elizabeth Bishop's time at Upton, see Ruth Brandon, Other People's Daughters: The Life and Times of the Governess, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2008, pp. 78-86. The Wollstonecrafts' stepmother was a sister of Rev. Thomas Woods, whom Tasker later appointed to succeed Rees as Rector of Nash.Daphne Johnson, On the Trail of the Wollstonecraft Family History, Shoeburyness, 2002, p. 41; Todd, p. 36; "Marriage Bonds of West Wales and Gower", West Wales Historical Records, Vol. VIII (ed. Francis Green), p. 239, bond dated 18 November 1783; WWHR, Vol. III, pp. 216-217.
Master Attendant On returning to India, Tasker entered the service of the East India Company as Master Attendant at Bombay.Barczewski, Country Houses and the British Empire 1700-1930, p. 99. His surviving inward and outward letter books commence in December 1791: Pembrokeshire Record Office, D/TE/1-5. It was at Bombay that the Company stationed its navy: there its vessels were built and repaired, its crews were paid, and its dockyard maintained. Its Master Attendant was sometimes called Harbourmaster or Captain of the Port and was deputy to the Marine Superintendent; he controlled the movement and mooring of vessels at the port, facilitated the works undertaken there, collected the dues accruing to the company, and kept good order about the company's premises. His annual salary was £3,000C. Northcote Parkinson, Trade in the Eastern Seas, 1783-1813, Cambridge University Press, 1937, p. 46. and he was permitted to engage in commerce for private reward.
His appointment as Master Attendant may have owed something to the influence of Governor William Hornby and of John Hunter who was for twenty years a Director of the East India Company. Perhaps reflecting this obligation, at his death Tasker left £100 to each of them to buy a ring.Will of John Tasker of Upton Castle, Pembrokeshire: TNA, PROB11/1354/172. When Tasker took up the Bombay appointment Hunter had counselled him against allowing ambition for "wanton lavishment of his property" to prolong his stay in IndiaBarczewski, Country Houses and the British Empire 1700-1930, p. 99. and, while there, Tasker managed Hunter's Indian investments and shipped locally sourced supplies to him in England.Chris Jeppesen, "The East India Company Presence in South Hertfordshire" in The East India Company at Home, 1757-1857, ed. Margot Finn and Kate Smith, University College London Press, 2018.
In 1793 Tasker and one of the Bomanjee brothers commissioned the building of another ship, the 627-ton and 14-gun vessel which they named Upton Castle after Tasker's estate in Wales. The ship was launched on 21 August 1793 when those attending the event and the following "elegant dinner" included Tasker's "good friend" Lachlan Macquarie, then stationed at Bombay with his regiment.Macquarie Journal, Vol. 2, entry for 21 August 1793, State Library of New South Wales (available in the Lachlan and Elizabeth Macquarie Archive at https://www.mq.edu.au/macquarie-archive/).
A few days later Tasker was one of the small party present at Macquarie's marriage and, with the bride's father, he was a trustee of the marriage settlement. Macquarie recorded that he and his new wife afterwards had the use of Tasker's carriage "whenever we want it" and in 1794 they lived at Admiralty House, Tasker's town residence, while he remained at his house in the country.Macquarie Journal, Vol. 2, entries for 2 and 8 September and 22 November 1783, 18 and 23 April and 13 May 1784.
Marine support from Bombay was important for land-based forces during the Third Anglo-Mysore War and for attacks on Dutch settlements in India, but the port itself was not under threat during Tasker's period as Master. It was presumably on account of the protection provided to commercial transport that, when Tasker announced his retirement from office in July 1795, the merchants of Bombay combined to give him their particular thanks for "the prompt assistance afforded the shipping of this port when in a situation of the greatest danger" and for his "exertions and professional abilities so eminently displayed".Calcutta Gazette, 6 August 1795, p. 2.
Tasker's retirement from his post as Master Attendant was consistent with his earlier intentions. He had considered it "too late in life to enter into extensive mercantile connections", and in February 1792 had written to his steward Leach "If I am alive you will see me in three years and to spend the remainder of my days at Upton". He retained financial interests in India after his departure home, and in 1799 Hormusjee Bomanjee reported having invested in shark-fins and sandalwood on his behalf.John Owen, "The Papers of John Tasker and the Tasker-Evans Family", Dyfed Archive Service Quarterly Newsletter, March 1986.
Final retirement and death