48 Kenneth S. Latourettc, 



The result of the European wars and the opening of new 

 avenues of trade and an efficient merchant marine, was a 

 phenomenal growth in American commerce with China. In 1789 

 Shaw^ mentions four American vessels at Canton^^ ; in the season 

 of 1804-5 there were thirty-four, in that of 1805-6 there were 

 forty-two, and in that of 1809-10 there were thirty-seven. The 

 imports to Canton in these last three seasons were $3,555,818, 

 $5,127,000, and $5,715,000 respectively.^' Although the total 

 commerce of the United States had more than c^uadrupled in a 

 decade and a half,**^ that with China had nearly kept pace with it, 

 averaging each year four and five per cent of the whole. **^ 



This great prosperity, however, was not unmixed with dan- 

 gers. The China seas were very stormy, and although no cases 

 of actual shipwreck are on record, occasional typhoons wrought 

 havoc, especially as the Americans, unlike the earlier Euro- 

 peans, persisted in coming at all seasons of the year."" Greater 

 were the dangers from men. Since Europeans have known them, 

 the Far Eastern waters have been periodically infested with 

 pirates, and in the decade from 1800 to 181 o an unusually power- 

 ful band preyed along the shores of Kwantung Province, and 

 centered around the Bocca Tigris. They were under one head, 

 and in 1810, when finally reduced by the imperial authorities, 

 they were said to have six hundred junks of from eighty to 

 three hundred tons burden each.'-*^ At first not daring to molest 

 European ships,"- in the later years of their power they became 



Trowbridge, Grandfather's Voyage around the World in the Ship Betsey, 

 1799-1801, New Haven, 1895, tells of a lad eighteen years old having such 

 a venture. 



*° Shaw's Journals, p. 297. 



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



** American State Papers, Commerce and Navigation, Washington, 1832. 

 1:927, 928. Exports from the United States, 1791-92, $20,753,098; 1806-7, 

 the banner year, $108,343,150. 



"" This was true at least from 1805 to 1810. 



^ Fanning, Voyages to South Seas, p. 93, tells of such a storm in 1807 

 or 1808. 



"^ John Francis Davis, China. 2 v., London, 1857, i : 68-71. 



"■ Jas. Gilchrist, Journal of a Voyage from Cape Verde Islands to 

 Canton, said, in July, 1808, that the pirates were growing in numbers and 

 would attack a foreign ship if it were in shoal water. 



