The Memoirs of Charles H. Cramp

by Augustus C. Buell

During the general period under consideration, that is to say, from the end of the Revolution to the beginning of the War of 1812, a new and highly important deep-sea traffic came into existence, of which Philadelphia soon obtained the supreme command. This was the East India and China trade. The first vessel to clear from Philadelphia for China direct was the new ship “Canton,” built by Humphreys and commanded by Captain, afterward Commodore, Thomas Truxtun.

This was the same Thomas Truxtun who, during the Revolution, had seen more service in privateers than any other sailor then afloat. He served either as mate or commander in the Philadelphia privateers, “Andrew Caldwell,” “Congress,” “Independence,” “Mars,” and “St. James,” from 1775 to 1782. His ships made altogether sixty-five captures of British merchantmen and transports. While commanding the “St. James,” of twenty guns, in 1781, he beat off and disabled a British 28-gun frigate. After the Revolution he commanded Philadelphia Indiamen from 1785 to 1798, when he was commissioned one of the original six captains in the regular navy. In the short war with France in 1799 he commanded the “Constellation,” 38-gun frigate, and took the French frigate “l’Insurgente,” of forty guns.

The “Canton” sailed from Philadelphia on December 30, 1785. She returned in May, 1787, having made the round voyage to Canton, Batavia, and home in a little over sixteen months. Her venture was highly profitable. From this beginning the far eastern trade grew steadily until, in 1805, Philadelphia alone owned twenty-seven ships plying in it, ranging from four hundred and twenty to seven hundred and five tons. Between 1805 and 1812, inclusive, the number of Philadelphia Indiamen and China ships increased to forty-two, notwithstanding the injurious effect of President Jefferson’s ill-advised embargo. In fact, that measure was not much observed by ship-owners in the India and China trade. President Jefferson did not attempt to enforce his embargo by either civil or military power, and very soon after he proclaimed it, the understanding became general among merchant ship-owners that if they chose to take the risks entailed by the British “Orders in Council” and Napoleon’s “Decrees of Milan and Berlin,” they could do so at their peril, with no recourse for protection or indemnity in case of misfortune. Under these conditions, ship-owning merchants, in other coast cities who traded with European or West India ports, for the most part hesitated to take the chances. But the Philadelphia merchant princes, who controlled the American trade with the British and Dutch East Indies and China, were not so easily foiled. They loaded and despatched their ships during the embargo, a period of nearly two years, almost as freely, if not as ostentatiously, then as they had done before or as they did afterward. This policy was founded upon the soundest judgment. The India and China merchants of Philadelphia understood perfectly that the titanic struggle between England and Napoleon involved conflicting policies and ambitions relating only to the commerce between America and Europe, not to that between America and the Orient. Occasionally an American ship bound for India or China or thence for home would be brought to by an English or a French cruiser and searched. But, as those ships never carried anything contraband of war, the worst that ever happened to them was the occasional impressment of parts of their crews by the English or the levying of a small tribute by the French. The voyages, as a whole, were seldom interrupted, and almost never terminated by detention or capture. These were the halcyon days of Philadelphia’s trade with the far East. From 1803 to 1815 the French could not trade to the Orient at all. And though the East India Company kept up the sailings of its fleet with more or less regularity, yet the war rates of insurance and the expense and inconvenience of constant convoy placed their traffic at signal disadvantage as compared with that of the neutral Americans.

The Philadelphia-built Indiamen and China ships of that day had another and even more important element of safety: Given plenty of sea-room and clear weather, with sailing wind, no British or French cruiser of their time could get anywhere near them.

For example, the “Rebecca Sims,” built by Samuel Bowers in 1801, and overhauled, coppered, and newly sparred and rigged in the winter of 1806-07, passed Cape Henlopen the 10th of May, 1807, and took a Liverpool pilot aboard off the mouth of the Mersey the 24th, having run from the Delaware Capes to the Mersey in fourteen days. Notwithstanding all the improvements in clipper ships after her time, the “Rebecca Sims” still holds the sailing record between Henlopen and Liverpool!

The “Woodrup Sims,” built for the same owner by Mr. Humphreys in 1801, was chartered for the China trade in 1808. She passed out of the Capes the 8th of April and anchored in Whampoa Roads, Canton, the 6th of August, one hundred and seventeen days from the Delaware. But from this must be deducted two days hove-to in Table Bay, Cape of Good Hope; three days in port at the Isle of France (now the Mauritius), and two days hove-to in Angier Road, Java Head, the actual running time having been one hundred and ten days. Manifestly, ships capable of that kind of sailing had little need to fear the cruisers of England or of France.

To give an approximate idea of the value of Philadelphia’s East India and China trade in its halcyon days, it may be related that in the autumn of 1812 the ship “Montesquieu,” belonging to Stephen Girard, left Canton for the Delaware via Batavia. At the latter port she took on board, in addition to her China cargo from Canton, a rich freight of spices. She left Batavia before the news of the War of 1812 reached there. Her commander had intended to touch only at the Cape of Good Hope on his voyage home, that being a British colony. But when about five hundred miles east of the Cape he spoke a Portuguese vessel bound for Macao, whose captain informed him that England and the United States were at war. He then ran for Tristan d’Acunha, where he obtained needed supplies of water and wood, with such fresh provisions as the island afforded. Thence shaping his course homeward he arrived off the Capes of the Delaware in April, 1813. There she was brought to and taken by the British frigate “Tenedos.” But Mr. Girard was on the alert, and, judging about the time she ought to arrive, had been waiting for her in a cottage he owned at or near Lewes, and she was taken in plain sight of the shore. He at once put off in a pilot-yawl under a flag of truce, boarded the British frigate, and after some parley succeeded in ransoming the “Montesquieu” for £37,000 sterling in specie bills on London! He then took his ship up the river to Philadelphia. The blockade had raised the value of China and East India products enormously in the American market, and Mr. Girard realized the handsome sum of $1,220,000 from the sale of her cargo over and above the $185,000 he had paid as ransom. He was also offered a large sum for the ship herself to fit out as a privateer, but part of his agreement with the British captain was that she should not be used for that purpose, and so she was laid up during the rest of the war.

Upon the conclusion of peace in 1815, the India and China trade of Philadelphia was renewed with great vigor, and ship-building became more brisk than ever before.

The war had nearly obliterated the whaling fleet of New England and New York. Unable to replace those lost or destroyed as quickly as they desired in their own ports, the whaling owners resorted to Philadelphia, and in the seven years between 1815-1822 sixty-four ships, ranging from three hundred to four hundred tons, were built on the Delaware for the whale fishery to hail from New Bedford, Nantucket, New London, Sag Harbor, and other whaling ports. A peculiarity of these transactions was that most of the contracts for building whale-ships were taken by New England builders and then sublet to Philadelphia yards.

At the same time, that is, in the decade following the peace of 1815, a new element of ocean commerce came into being. This was the inauguration of regular packet-lines. The pioneer of this enterprise on any considerable scale was the famous “Cope Line,” founded by Thomas P. Cope in 1820, and employing at first five ships which were among the largest and best vessels then afloat. This line continued to run until the Civil War. Its ships were from five hundred and sixty to one thousand two hundred and eighty tons. They sailed from Philadelphia the 20th of each month and from Liverpool the 8th, their trip-time averaging thirty days and being almost as regular as the modern steamship lines. In addition to this regular monthly service, extra ships were frequently despatched as the exigencies of trade and travel might require.