Page 164 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

150.

ing seasons. While waiting out the cormnercial depression,

this house and the other Americans at Canton faced a more

immediate crisis. The Americans became embroiled with

the Chinese authorities in a legal dispute, which demon­

strated the attitude with which Americans perceived their

role at Canton and in the China trade. This crisis forced

the merchants to define their position openly. Once defined,

this attitude governed their approach in conducting trade

thereafter. The dispute arose in September 1821 over

Francis Terranovia, a seaman on the American ship 11Emily, 11

and his involvement in the death by drowning of a Chinese

woman.

Terranovia himself denied that he was in any way

responsible for the woman's death. In a sworn deposition,

the seaman claimed that he had wished to purchase fruit

from a woman selling it from a small boat alongside the

"Emily". He stated that he "gave safe into her hands an

earthen pot which she received." Terranovia testified

he then saw her have trouble controlling her boat and sub­

sequently fall overboard and drown. In the three days fol­

lowing the incident on September 23, American Consul Benja­

min C. Wilcocks received sworn depositions from over thirty

American and British captains and seamen who purported to

have witnessed the woman's death. An overwhelming majority

of them agreed with Terranovi.a' s statement that the woman