Reputedly a fine-looking wooden barque, she was built in a shipbuilding yard at Coringa, near Madras in India, where she was launched in January 1833.

[1] Charles Eaton, under the command of Captain Fowle, arrived in London with 1000 chests of indigo worth about £45,000.

On 14 June 1833 Lloyd’s Shipping List had noted that: "The cargo saved from the James Sibbald, built in Bombay, and wrecked on reefs off Coringa in 1832, has been reshipped per Charles Eaton".

Also on board was a young ship's boy called John Ireland, the only member of the crew who lived to tell the story of what happened to the Charles Eaton.

At Hobart Town she obtained new passengers returning to India after two years' sick leave: Captain Thomas D'Oyly of the Bengal Artillery, his wife Charlotte, his two sons George and William, and their Indian ayah (nurse).

The barque left Sydney on 29 July 1834 and was wrecked on the Great Barrier Reef near the Sir Charles Hardy Islands on 15 August 1834.

[5][4] Those remaining at the wreck made two rafts, the first of which set sail with all the passengers, Captain Moore, surgeon Grant, steward Montgomery and two strong sailors to man the oars.

They reached a small sandy cay now called Boydang, inhabited at the time by visiting Torres Strait islanders, who killed all the adults and kept their skulls for their daily ceremonial rituals.

[4] The second raft left Charles Eaton's wreck with the rest of the crew and they, too, were murdered and beheaded by the visiting party of islanders.

[4][6] John Ireland and William D'Oyly lived with their captors for some months, and were eventually exchanged to a couple from Murray Island (local name Mer) in the Torres Strait, for a bunch of bananas.

After burning the village to the ground, the men found a dilapidated shed, and in it a huge mask made of a single decorated turtle shell surrounded by human skulls of Europeans.