Page 383 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

369.

their opposition to any official American interference in their

cormnerce at Canton and their willingness to abide by laws and

regulations of the Celestial Empire. Finch despatched the mer­

chants• advice to the Secretary of the Navy and sailed on to

11
Manila. From the Philippines the 11Vincennes rounded Cape of
Good Hope to attain distinction as the first American warship

to circumnavigate the globe.

1
1
Two years after the departure of the Vincennes 11 in
1832, two more naval vessels stoppea in China. Both the U.S.

Frigate ''Potomac II and the U.S. Sloop-of-war 11Peacock 11 were
part of an expedition corrmissioned to bombard Quallah Battoo,

a port on the coast of Sumatra (Dutch East Indies). In 1830

Sumatran natives had attacked an American merchantman and

killed its crew at this port. Included in.the expedition was

a passenger on the 11Peacock, 11 Edmund Roberts. A New Hampshire

merchant who had made a fortune in the East India trade, Roberts

long had argued that the American government should conclude

comi�ercial treaties in Asia. His pressure finally succeeded

when his close friend Levi Woodbury wassJpointed Secretary of

the Navy by President Jackson in 1832. Secretary Woodbury se-

cured a cormnission from the State Department for Roberts to

accompany the punitive cruise as an agent with power to conclude
55
. th Siam ana Coe in Cnina.
t.
t rea ies wi . � h. , . These states, besides
China, were the only ones east of India in which Americans

had commercial interests and which had remained free from

55 1
Roberts rank aboard ship was Secretary-to-the-Commander.
Dennett, Americans in Eastern Asia, pp. 128-34. For Roberts 1 mem­
oirs of this mission, see Edmund Roberts, Embassy to the Eastern
Courts of Cochin-China, Siam, and Muscat, in the U.S. Sloop-of­
.
War Peacock . . during the Years 1832-3-4 (New York, 1837).