These records consist of three main Hamilton family members:
Commander John Hamilton records consist of very full records for all of the Bombay Castle's voyages, including expenses, signal books, lists of passengers, and accounts of the French prize. There is also an extract from the Castle Huntly's log, 1819.
Commander Archibald Hamilton records consist of journals, owners' instructions, accounts of stores, navigational workbooks, cash books, as well as accounts of the engagement off Pulo Aor and the subsequent court of enquiry. There are also private and general trade accounts and several items of economic interest, including a fabric pattern sample book the papers relate to Montgomerie Hamilton, younger brother of Archibald. There are a number of logs of other East India Company ships, 1765 to 1785, and some papers of William Reid, relating to trade with North America, 1734 to 1735.
Commander Alexander Montgomerie records are account books for the Besborough, 1777 to 1781; a letterbook, 1786 to 1788, and a log book of the Bombay Castle, 1793 to 1794.
The last section is on the great grandfather of John and Archibald, Hugh Hamilton, and his two sons John (RN, then a Jamaica Planter) and Robert, who married a Jamaica planter's widow.

Administrative / biographical background
The person that dominates the collection is Archibald Hamilton. Of the eleven voyages of the BOMBAY CASTLE, and her successor the BOMBAY he was captain for six of them. He worked his way up through the ranks of the service, as the other Hamiltons had done, and assumed his first command of a ship when his brother, Captain John Hamilton, put him in charge of the French prize ship La MEDEE in 1800. In 1802 he took command of the BOMBAY CASTLE for her 5th voyage. Except for the second voyage of the BOMBAY, when his brother Montgomerie was captain, he remained in command until 1820. John Hamilton, elder brother of Archibald Hamilton (q.v.), and nephew of Alexander Montgomerie (q.v.), first went to sea in the service of the East India Company. He took command of the BOMBAY CASTLE for three voyages between 1795 and 1801, when the ship was managed by Alexander Montgomerie (q. V.). The first two of these voyages were to Bombay and China. The destination of the third was to China direct and it was during this voyage, when the BOMBAY CASTLE was one of six East Indiamen under convoy of Captain Rowley Bulteel (fl.1780-1820) in HMS Belliqueux, that three French frigates and a prize schooner were sighted off the coast of Brazil. Montgomerie was a brother of Hugh Montgomerie, 12th Earl of Eglinton. The family intermarried with the Hamiltons of Rozelle, Ayrshire. The two families managed and commanded East India Company ships for nearly fifty years. Montgomerie was commander of the BESBOROUGH for three voyages, 1777 to 1788, and commander and managing owner of the BOMBAY CASTLE on her first voyage, 1793 to 1794. He was managing owner of the ship for her next three voyages, between 1795 and 1801, which were made under the command of his cousin, John Hamilton (q.v.).