1786 in Great Britain

Events from the year 1786 in the Kingdom of Great Britain.

Incumbents

6 January - The outward bound East Indiaman Halsewell is wrecked on the Isle of Portland in a storm with only 74 of more than 240 on board surviving.^[1]
14 July - Convention of London between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Spain: British settlements on the Mosquito Coast of Central America are to be evacuated; Spain expands the territory available to the British in Belize on the Yucatán Peninsula for cutting mahogany.
August - British Cabinet approves the establishment of a penal colony at Botany Bay to serve as "a remedy for the evils likely to result from the late alarming and numerous increase of felons in this country and more particularly in the metropolis" (London).
11 August - Captain Francis Light acquires the island of Penang from the Sultan of Kedah on behalf of the British East India Company, renaming it Prince of Wales Island in honour of the heir to the British throne,^[2] the first colony of the British Empire in Southeast Asia.
26 September - Commercial treaty with France (the Eden Agreement) signed.^[3]

Sinking fund of £1M per annum established to reduce the national debt.
New Lanark established in South Lanarkshire, Scotland, by David Dale, as a model cotton milling community.
Wills, Watkins & Co. open a tobacconists’ shop in Bristol which will become W.D. & H.O. Wills.

1 January - Dixon Denham, explorer (died 1828)
26 January - Benjamin Haydon, painter and writer (died 1846)
17 April - William King, physician and philanthropist (died 1865)
5 July - Charles Stothard, draughtsman (died 1821)
24 September - Granville Waldegrave, naval officer (died 1857)
26 September - James Bremer, rear admiral (died 1850)
2 November - Anne Knight, social reformer (died 1862)
Unknown dates
- James Foster, ironmaster (died 1853)
- William Horner, mathematician (died 1837)
- John Shuttleworth, industrialist and political campaigner (died 1864)
Approximate dates
- Fairfax Moresby, Calcutta-born Admiral (died 1877)
- Hyde Parker, Vice Admiral (died 1854)

↑ "Loss of the Halsewell East-Indiaman". Remarkable Shipwrecks; Or, A Collection of Interesting Accounts of Naval Disasters: With Many Particulars of the Extraordinary Adventures and Sufferings of the Crews of Vessels Wrecked at Sea, and of Their Treatment on Distant Shores. Together with an Account of the Deliverance of Survivors. Hartford: Andrus and Starr. 1813. pp. 214–25. Retrieved 2013-02-02.
↑ 2.0 2.1 Williams, Hywel (2005). Cassell's Chronology of World History. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. p. 339. ISBN 0-304-35730-8.
↑ 3.0 3.1 Palmer, Alan; Palmer, Veronica (1992). The Chronology of British History. London: Century Ltd. pp. 230–231. ISBN 0-7126-5616-2.