Earl Talbot was another East India Company Indiaman purchased by the Royal Navy; who bought her while she was still on the stocks.
Renamed HMS Agincourt, she was converted into a 64-gun ship-of-the-line and served in the Egyptian Campaign. While the Royal Navy had entered the French Revolutionary Wars with a surplus of 64-gun ships which had been produced during the American War of Independence (further supplemented with more captured from continental powers), the Navy was so stretched that converting East India ships became expedient.
Like other such "Sugar and Tea Ships" (a derisive nickname assigned to East Indiamen-turned-warships by some RN members), her breadth meant that she possessed poor sailing characteristics, sailing slower than purpose-built military vessels, a fact that Nelson bemoaned at any opportunity.
