Ocean was launched on October 30, 1788, from the Wells shipyard at Deptford on the Thames. She measured 1,189 tons burthen, with an overall length of 136 feet 4 inches, a beam of 41 feet 1.5 inches, and a depth of hold of 17 feet. Her principal managing owner was William Fraser, and she carried 26 six-pounder guns -- enough to discourage pirates but no match for a proper warship. She sailed with a complement of 125 men. East Indiamen like Ocean occupied a peculiar place in the maritime world: private merchant vessels built to the proportions of warships, designed to look more dangerous than they were. That ambiguity would, on one January afternoon in a tropical strait, save every life aboard.

Ocean made four voyages for the Honourable East India Company. Captain James Tod took her on the maiden run in 1789, sailing from Torbay to Madras and then to Whampoa, the anchorage below Canton where European traders loaded Chinese tea, silk, and porcelain. Captain Andrew Patton assumed command for the second voyage in 1791 and would remain her master for the rest of her career. Patton was experienced -- this was his fifth trip to the East -- and the routes were long but well-charted: down through the Atlantic to Saint Helena or the Cape, east across the Indian Ocean to Madras or Penang, then through the Malacca Strait to China. The third voyage was delayed when the British government held Ocean at Portsmouth, along with other Indiamen, for a planned invasion of Ile de France -- present-day Mauritius. The plan was abandoned, the ships were released, and the government paid compensation: 586 pounds, 13 shillings, and 4 pence for twenty-two days of lost time. Patton sailed under a letter of marque, authorizing him to take enemy prizes during the French Revolutionary Wars, though a merchantman's real business was always cargo, not combat.

The fourth voyage began in May 1796. After calls at the Cape of Good Hope, Madras, and Colombo, Ocean joined a convoy of five other Indiamen for the passage to China. Captain James Farquharson of the Alfred served as commodore. On January 28, 1797, the convoy was threading the Bali Strait when they sighted Admiral Pierre Cesar Charles de Sercey's French frigate squadron heading south from Batavia toward Mauritius. Farquharson made a quick calculation. His ships could not outrun frigates, and they could not outfight them. But East Indiamen were built to resemble warships, and from a distance the distinction was difficult to make. Farquharson hoisted the flag of Commodore Peter Rainier, the actual British commander-in-chief in the East Indies, and ordered every ship in the convoy to raise pendants and ensigns as though they were Royal Navy vessels. Two Indiamen peeled off and chased the French frigate Cybele. Captain Threouart of the Cybele ran signals up his mast: "The enemy is superior in force." De Sercey, under orders to avoid engagement with a superior fleet, turned his squadron around and withdrew. The ruse was complete. Farquharson became a celebrity in the British press.

The celebration lasted four days. On February 1, a storm caught the convoy in the waters south of Sulawesi, and Ocean struck a reef off Kalatea at roughly 7 degrees 9 minutes south, 121 degrees east -- in the Flores Sea, between the islands of Flores and Sulawesi. Patton sent the ship's cutter to make contact with people ashore, but the damage was beyond repair. On February 5, the crew scuttled Ocean rather than let her break apart uncontrolled. The evacuation went badly. Every ship's boat was lost except the longboat, and two crewmen drowned. The survivors camped on the shore, exposed and far from any European settlement. On February 15, local inhabitants attacked the camp, killing seven men and wounding four more. Three days later, the remaining crew departed in the longboat and three hired proas -- traditional outrigger sailing vessels -- and began a passage of roughly 500 miles across open ocean. They reached Amboina on February 28. The Taunton Castle, one of Ocean's convoy companions, picked up survivors at Amboina months later, on September 16, eventually reaching England in February 1798. Patton survived and returned to command a second ship named Ocean for the Company. He died in Bombay in 1803, age forty-two, on his second voyage in that vessel.