Page 34 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

20.

response to these proposals. Soon after 1800 profits from

sealing decreased. Seeing the immense profits gained from

the trade around 1800, merchants entered more and more vessels

into such adventures. This increase flooded the market with

pelts. Even more significant in ending the trade were the

indiscriminate and wasteful methods employed in sealing. A

ship needed to collect roughly one million pelts for a full

cargo. As profit was their only concern, American captains

and their crews felt no compunction about killing all seals as

fast as possible. Within ten years they left most seal islands

in the South Seas completely barren. A combination of a

glutted market followed by a scarcity of supply ended the

trade by 1812.

With the end of the sealing trade, many American vessels

formerly employed in it moved northward to the Northwest Coast.

Others ventured elsewhere for China cargoes. Some of these

entered into the trade of beche-de-mer, a sea slug considered

a gourmet delicacy by the Chinese. Trading vessels collected

the beche-de-mer in the South Seas usually along coral reefs

surrounding the islands. The process was long and arduous,
with crewmen often suffering cuts from the reefs. Not too many

Americans stayed in this trade for long. They joined others

who had found a new type of trade just beginning at the Sand­

wich Islands.

American vessels had been stopping at the Sandwich

(Hawaiian) Islands ever since they had first ventured around

Cape Horn to the Northwest for furs. Although these Islands