Surprize was a three-deck merchant vessel launched in 1780 that made five voyages as a packet ship under charter to the British East India Company (EIC). She also participated in the notorious Second Fleet, transporting convicts to Port Jackson. A French frigate captured her in the Bay of Bengal in 1799.

The Second Fleet was a convoy of six ships carrying settlers, convicts and supplies to Sydney Cove, Australia in 1790. It followed the First Fleet which established European settlement in Australia in the previous year.