Hercules was built in New England in 1792. She was an American East Indiaman that in 1796 the British East India Company (EIC) hired in India to carry rice from Bengal to England. She was wrecked in June 1796.

Hercules appeared in the 1795 volume of Lloyd's Register.^[1]

The EIC hired Hercules in Bengal to carry rice to England.^[3] She was carrying the rice on behalf of the British government, which was importing grain to address high prices for wheat in Britain following a poor harvest.

Hercules sailed from Calcutta on 17 March 1796. On 16 June she wrecked at Kaffraria, on the East Coast of Africa, north of the Cape of Good Hope.^[2] Thirteen of her crew drowned; the survivors reached the Cape.^[4] Captain Stout later wrote an account of his adventures,^[5] though much of his account of the region through which he travelled came in for criticism as being a fabrication.^[6] The EIC charged the loss of the cargo to "His Majesty's Government".^[7]

• Hackman, Rowan (2001). Ships of the East India Company. Gravesend, Kent: World Ship Society. ISBN 0-905617-96-7.
• House of Commons, Parliament, Great Britain (1830). Reports from the Select Committee of the House of Commons appointed to enquire into the present state of the affairs of the East India Company, together with the minutes of evidence, an appendix of documents, and a general index. Vol. 2. Printed by order of the honourable court of directors, by J.L. Cox.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Stout, Benjamin (1820). The total loss of the American ship Hercules, Captain Benjamin Stout, in South Africa on the 16th June 1796, with an accurate narrative of the sufferings and disasters of the crew in their long and painful journey over the southern regions of Africa to the Cape of Good Hope. London: Champante & Whitrow.