Early Relations between the United States and Cliina. 65 



are surprisingly small, especially when we remember that there 

 were often entered in one year at Canton more than forty 

 American ships. ^^ 



The first great Salem merchant in the China trade was Elias 

 Hasket Derby. He made a fortune in privateering during the 

 Revolution" and entered the Far Eastern trade soon after the 

 treaty of peace. Most of the Salem ships at Canton before 1800 

 were his.^"' The most prominent merchant of Salem after the 

 second war with Great Britain was Joseph Peabody. He began 

 his career in one of Derby's privateers during the Revolution/* 

 and retired from the sea in 1791 to become a merchant trader. 

 His vessels made seventeen voyages to Canton.^* With possibly 

 one exception all the Salem-China voyages after 1826 were under 

 him.^^ 



The origin of the Boston-China commerce was closely con- 

 nected with that of Salem. Thomas Handasyd Perkins went out 

 as a supercargo in the "Astrea," one of Derby's ships, in 1789 

 and 1790.^'^ While at Canton he met the "Columbia," just 



" Sen. Docs., No. 31, i Sess., 19th Cong. 



''~ George Atkinson Ward, Joseph Peabody, in Freeman Hunt's Lives 

 of American Merchants, New York, 1856, p. 372. 



°^ Trow, Old Shipmasters of Salem, p. 45. Trow says that at the time 

 of his death Derby was the richest man in the United States. See also 

 on Derby, Cleveland, Voyages, i : i, Weeden, Ec. and Soc. Hist, of 

 N.^Eng., p. 822. 



"Ward, Joseph Peabody, in Hunt's Lives of Am. Merchants, p. 380. 



^^ Digest of Duties, Salem Custom House, 1789-1851. Impost. Book 

 No. 8, Salem Custom House. The first gives the list of voyages, the 

 second shows that in the "Leander" in 1826, and the "Sumatra," 1830, 

 the principal part of the duties was paid by Peabody, and as all voyages 

 but one, that made by the "Eclipse" in 1832, were made by these two 

 ships, the inference that Joseph Peabody was the principal investor 

 seems a fair one. On Peabody see also Osgood and Batchelder, Salem, 

 p. 134, and Trow, Old Shipmasters of Salem, p. 45. William Gray, 

 later of Boston, was in the Salem-China trade for a time. Edward 

 Gray, William Gray of Salem, Merchant, Boston and New York, 1914. 



^"Abbreviations of a Journal of the ship "Astrea," MS. in Essex 

 Institute, and Thomas G. Cary, Memoir of Thos. H. Perkins, in Hunt's 

 Lives of Am. Merchants, pp. 33-101. See also N. Eng. Hist'l and Genl. 

 Register, 10 : 201-21 1, for a review of it. Cary was a son-in-law of Perkins, 

 and this memoir should be authoritative. 

 Trans. Conn. Acad., Vol. XXII 5 1917 



