Page 18 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

4.

smaller vessels plying between the United States and Europe in

commercial enterprises designed to collect specie and sundry
merchandise for China and the East Indies. The same vessels

carried China teas and silks to European ports. Larger
vessels, averaging around two hundred tons burthen, took the

cargoes gathered by the smaller vessels to East India and re­

turned laden with teas and silks from China, coffee and spices
3
from the East Indies, or sugar and hemp from the Philippines.

Often a vessel touched at several ports and carried a cargo

composed of articles gathered at every stop.

Only more prosperous merchants could afford to main­

tain a. fleet of vessels in the East India trade. Most Ameri­

can merchants combined their interests and invested in single

ventures. Often the type of vessel employed by a combination

of this nature was under one hundred tons burthen. In fact a

large part of Atuerican vessels that sailed to East India in­

cluded smaller vessels such as barks (barques) and brigs.

Distinguished nautically from the larger ships by number of

masts and type of rigging, barks and brigs were faster but more

prone to shipwreck because of their light tonnage. Whereas

ships had three masts (foremast, mainmast and mizzenmast), all

square-rigged, barks had three masts of which only two (fore­

mast and mainmast) were square-rigged, and brigs had two masts
both square-rigged. Americans utilized the lightness of the

3
winthrop L. Marvin, The American Merchant Marine
(New York, 1920), pp. 199-200.