Page 239 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

225.

tance from Lintin to Hong Kong, to the southeast, was roughly

the same. Here the trade found fewer risks, but the move

necessitated a new system of storing the opium. Most of the

vessels that brought the drug also carried legitimate cargo,

which had to go upriver to Whampoa. Foreigners had to devise

facilities for receiving the opium once it was unloaded. The

answer was the receiving ship, floating hulks that provided

a base for all transactions involved in the trade and yet

could be moved. With the trade at Lintin, opium could now
be sold all during the year instead of being limited to the

trading seasons at Whampoa. But during the summer season of

southwest monsoons, Lintin like Whampoa was unsafe. In those

months the receiving ships would be taken to the shielded

anchorages of Xapsingmoonu Kapsuimoon and Hong Kong. The

trade could .continue there unimpeded.

Receiving ships had been used in the opium trade

before the crisis of 1821. Their obvious advantage was that

they allowed a merchant to hold the drug until the market

reached prices he desired. Supercargoes in charge of opium

consignments aboard vessels could not always afford to wait

for better market conditions. Resident merchants early dis­

covered the extra profits they could reap by avoiding time
28
limitations on their sales. They could also handle larger

1
consignments for the same reason. Before the mid-1820 s there

28
Stelle, "American Trade in Opium to China, 1821-39, "
pp. 61-62. Downs, "American Merchants and the Opium Trade, "
p. 424.