Page 25 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

11.

another ship financed by New York merchants. From his experience

on this adventure he visualized an ever-increasing growth of

American trade not only to China but also to other parts of

Asia. Shaw interested his friend Thomas Randall, another mil­
itary officer turned merchant, in the idea of creating a monopo­

listic and government-financed )unerican East India Company to

compete with the English Company. The "Massachusetts" would

be the first step in realizing this idea.

Built in imitation of the English Company's hugh mer­

chantmen, Shaw's new ship was eighteen hundred tons burthen

with a keel of one hundred and sixteen feet. Compared to the

average American merchantman of two hundred tons burthen, this

was the largest American ship afloat. On its first voyage to

Canton in 1790, the "Massachusetts" sailed with newly reappointed

Consul Shaw aboard. After his arrival at Canton, Shaw could

not profitably sell his cargo of ginseng. In the two years he

had been absent from Canton the ginseng market, never as large

as Shaw had first assumed, had become glutted and prices had

depreciated considerably. Shaw also discovered that the wood

used to construct his ship had decayed, since the builders had

failed to reason it properly. So the voyage that was to give

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impetus to a public American trading company failed. Shaw
himself died shortly thereafter.

III

Although the first American vessel to visit Canton

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Marvin, American Mere h ant Marine, pp. 77 80 .
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