Page 27 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

13.

a cargo until the summer of 1789.

Capt. Kendrick despatched Capt. Gray in the "Columbia"

on to Canton with the cargo of furs while he remained on the

Coast with the "Lady Washington" to acquire more skins. Gray

traded his cargo for teas at Canton and returned to Boston via

1
the more tranquil Cape of Good Hope. The "Columbia s 11 voyage
was not successful financially, as other vessels had reached

the American market with teas before it. But this Boston enter­

prise in sending the first American vessels around Cape Horn
opened a whole new branch of trade for American merchants.

During the following decade the number of American vessels
13
sailing along the Northwest Coast steadily increased. In

1790, on his second voyage in the "Columbia," Capt. Robert Gray

discovered and named the Columbia River.

In the early years of the fur trade an adventure to

the Northwest was a very risky speculation. The voyage brought

the owner either great profits or severe losses. Although

costs in such an operation were small, success was by no means

certain. Usually a vessel left the United States in late summer

or early fall to arrive on the Northwest Coast in the spring,

after a six-month trip via Cape Horn and the Sandwich (Hawaiian)

Islands. The section of the Northwest Coast most frequented by

American fur traders included the "sea-coast between the mouth

I
of the Columbia River. • and Cook S Inlet .ion the Bering Strai. !] 11

13
Latourette, "Early Relations between the United States
and China," pp. 29-34, and Morison, Maritime History of Massa­
chusetts, pp. 46-49.