Page 26 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

12.

sailed from New York, Boston merchants quickly ventured into

the East India trade. These entrepreneurs possessed large
capital reserves, great resources, and the advantages of an

excellent harbor. Instead of looking eastward, they despatched

their vessels southward along the coast of Spanish America,

around Cape Horn, and on to Canton through the Pacific Ocean.

The merchants of Boston developed the trade to China with fur

from the South Seas and the Northwest Pacific Coast of North

America.

American vessels first arrived to trade for furs on
1
the Northwest Coast in the 1780 s. This fur trade developed as

a corollary to the American China trade. In 1781 the British

explorer Capt. James Cook had published journals of his voyage

to the Pacific Ocean. In the early years of the China trade

Boston merchants began searching for articles besides ginseng

to trade at Canton. Aware of a market for furs in China from

the reports of returning Americans, an association of Boston
12
merchants headed by Joseph Barrell, in 1787 despatched two

11
vessels, Capt. John Kendrick on the ship Columbia 11 and Capt.
Robert Gray on the sloop "Lady Washington," around Cape Horn

to trade for furs on the Northwest Coast. Because of bad

weather conditions both at Cape Horn and on the Northwest Coast,

the two vessels were not able to collect enough pelts to fill

12
The six merchants includPd J. Barrell, S. Brown, C.
Bullfinch, J. Derby, C. Hatch and J.M. Pintard. A cormnemorative
11
medal was struck for the occasion and put aboard the "Columbia to
be carried around the world. The origins of this voyage and an
illustration of the medal are in Robert Greenhow, A History of
Oregon and California and Other Territories of the Northwest.
(Boston, 1844), pp. 179-81, and Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of
the Northwest Coast (2 vols.; New York, 1884), I, 185-87.