"1805 : Baltimore ship, Entan, carries opium to Canton "

It was February, 1784. Only five months earlier, the U.S. and Great Britain signed the Treaty of Paris (September 3, 1783). This agreement ended the Revolutionary War. U.S. ships could no longer trade with the British West Indies. Trade with other nations was in a slump. Americans especially missed tea. Robert Morris (1734-1806), a banker, decided to find a way to supply that tea. By doing so, he said, he hoped "to encourage others in the adventurous pursuit of commerce."

Empress of China

Morris hired a small ship and renamed it the Empress of China. The ship was set to sail east, around the southern tip of Africa, to Canton (Guangzhou), China. It would return by the same route. The ship's captain, John Green, had spent the war attacking British cargo ships. His crew of 34 men included a gunner, who would come in handy if the ship met pirates. Also aboard were two carpenters, a barrel-maker, and several boys. The boys were beginning their careers in the merchant marine.

In some ways, the most important man aboard was the "supercargo," Samuel Shaw of Boston. Shaw was a businessman, in charge of the $120,000 cargo in the ship's hold. The Empress carried lead, 2,600 animal skins, fine camel cloth, cotton, and a few barrels of pepper. It also carried 30 tons of ginseng, a root that grew wild in North America. The Chinese valued ginseng for its healing powers.

Trading in Canton

The Empress left New York harbor on February 22, 1784. Six months later, in August, it arrived at Macao, a Portuguese outpost on the Chinese coast. Here, Captain Green hired Chinese pilots to guide his ship up the Pearl River to Whampoa. Trading ships stayed in Whampoa while their supercargoes worked out deals in Canton, 12 miles upstream.

The Chinese wanted as few foreigners as possible in their country. They believed that China was the center of a square earth. Foreigners, they felt, had nothing but trouble to offer China. The Chinese called the Americans the "New People." But Americans were lumped with all outsiders as "Foreign Devils."

Samuel Shaw spent the next fourth months in Canton. Foreigners there weren't free to roam. The Chinese ordered them to stay in compounds call hongs [see Macartney and the Emperor for more about hongs]. Hongs were pleasant places, where Chinese merchants called to trade.

Shaw traded his cargo for tea, nankeen (Chinese cotton), tableware, silk, and spice. The shipment was welcomed in the U.S. when the Empress returned there in May, 1785. The Chinese goods brought Robert Morris and his partners $30,000 — an impressive profit.

Other U.S. merchants were quick to see the value of the China trade. At first, however, they flooded the Chinese market with ginseng. Chinese demand for the root dropped, and so did its price. But the Chinese did want sea-otter pelts, which Yankees traded from Indians in the American Northwest. Sandalwood, found in the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), also brought a high price from Chinese merchants.

From Ginseng to Opium

The trade took an ugly turn in the early 1800s. British merchants began carrying opium to China, and many Americans followed suit. Opium, a drug, created its own demand by making addicts of its users. U.S. merchants found they could buy a pound of opium in Turkey for $2.50 and sell it in Canton for $10.00.

A Chinese attempt to shut down the opium traffic led to war with Britain. The "Opium War" lasted two years. It ended with a treaty that punished China and opened four more ports to British shipping. In later treaties, China granted the U.S. and France the same privileges Britain had.

Turmoil within China would interrupt trade with the U.S. during the next 100 years. Then, in 1949, a Communist government took over in China. The next year, Chinese and U.S. troops faced off in Korea, and the China trade ended for 22 years.

Now, commerce between China and the U.S. is picking up again. Trade has brought the two nations closer, just as it did in 1784.

I opened the worn and weathered logbook and was transported back to an exhilarating era of faraway lands, secret trade, and international incidents. From the first page, I was hooked. In my first weeks as an intern at the National Museum of American History, my supervisor, Maritime Curator Paul Johnston, asked me to research the logbook of the brig Ea, a vessel suspected of involvement in the opium trade. A brig is square rigged ship with two masts; the Ea was built in Baltimore, Maryland, circa 1815 as a merchant vessel during one of America's busiest trading eras. Doctor Johnston accessioned the logbook because the Ea was a local ship, and believed it would serve as a good representation of commerce at the time. The name of this vessel, Ea, is unusual—we can only surmise the two letters are the initials of an owner's loved one. The ship's logbook began on February 24, 1821, when the ship departed from Baltimore on a trading voyage to Canton, China. According to the log keeper, William Sanford, the ship reached Canton in August 1821, and left again on November 28, 1821, heading for Amsterdam. By 1793, the British East India Co. had a monopoly on the opium trade from India to China; around this time the number of Chinese and British who recreationally smoked opium reached an all time high (no pun intended). The Chinese Emperor banned opium in 1799, making trade illegal. In the early 1800s, though, American traders realized the high profits involved and began to smuggle opium from Turkey into China. The commodity passed primarily through the complicated port of Canton, where it was bought by shady merchants on islands in the bay. Perkins & Company of Boston, Massachusetts, was a major American trading company with a firm in Canton; in fact, the company would use rice cargoes to cover up opium transactions. John Perkins Cushing recorded the arrival and departure of trading ships, including the Ea. After much searching to determine if the Ea participated in opium trading, I found a single sentence in an obscure book, citing Perkins & Company records: "…The Ea, Captain Alexander Clark, [arrived] with between 140 and 160 piculs of the drug [opium]." A picul is an ancient Asian standard of weight and is approximately 133.3 lbs.; thus the Ea was smuggling an astonishing 20,000 pounds of opium! Digging deeper, I found a report of the United States Secretary of State regarding an international issue involving the Ea and Captain Clark. On September 25, 1821, while the Ea was anchored at Canton, an Italian crewman on board another American merchant vessel was accused of killing a Chinese woman. Captain Clark signed as witness of the event, with multiple other ship captains. Political relations between China and the U.S. tensed as the Chinese wanted to execute the Italian sailor and the U.S. stalled for a fair trial. Unfortunately, the Italian was executed. I did not find out any other information about this incident; it was not mentioned in the logbook nor was there mention of any repercussions for Captain Clark. Many more hours could be spent unraveling the complicated mystery of the Ea. The opium trade was an early example of international drug smuggling and exemplifies the repercussions of a quick profit fueled by addiction. Researching the Ea sparked my fascination for the dark undercurrents of this chapter in American history. There is something fascinating about the stories preserved in a ship's battered logbook, and something enticing about a smuggling brig setting sail for the far ports of Canton.