日志
麻省航海史1783-1860
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"Since the opening years of the century, Perkins & Co. had made a specialty of carrying Smyrna opium to Canton; so did Joseph Peabody and every Boston or Salem merchant who could get it." p277
But the total import of this inferior variety was inconsiderable, in comparison with the immense consignments of opium
from British India — five hundred and seventy- eight thousand dollars’ worth in the season of 1833-34, as compared
with fourteen million dollars’ worth of seductive Malwa and fragrant Patna, smuggled in by British ships.?
A small part, also, of the imports under the British flag were on the account of Russell & Co. and Augus- tine Heard. Within a few years’ time, a fleet of Boston clipper schooners and brigs (like the 92-ton Ariel, which almost drowned R. B. Forbes on her trial trip, the 100-ton Zephyr and the 370-ton Antelope, built by Samuel Hall) was distributing opium along the China coast from Lintin Island, where the American firms maintained receiving ships. One small house at Can- ton was founded by a Salem mate and ship’s carpenter who, taking advantage of Chinese respect for the dead, landed a large consignment of the forbidden drug in coffins supposed to contain departed shipmates! Oly- phant & Co. of New York (derisively called ‘Zion’s
Page 354
1 A sample crew is that of the ship Reindeer, Canton to Boston: 2 Frenchmen, 1 Portuguese, 1 Cape Verde Islander, 1 Azores man, I Italian, 1 Dutchman, 1 Mulatto, 2 Kanakas, 1 Welshman, 1 Swede, 2 Chinese, and 2 Americans. (Boston Atlas, July 22, 1851.) The Black Prince had even foreign officers. Captain Brown was a Portuguese by birth; the chief mate was Danish, the 2d British, the 3d German, and out of 24 able seamen there were but two Americans; one from Newbury- port and one from Boston.
Many deserted in the Sandwich Islands, but who would not? Rumors have come down of unscrupulous own- ers,
who in order to save money abandoned men on the Northwest Coast and substituted Kanakas. Captain James
Magee brought the first Chinaman to the United States, but he was a student, not a sailor. And few such made
the voyage twice. As ‘‘China Jack”’ (the favorite Whampoa factotum for American vessels) remarked after essaying
a round trip to Boston, ‘“Too muchee strong gale, sea allsame high mast head —no can see sky!”’
