Barons of the Sea

by Steven Ujifusa

  The Union Club of New York was my home base when I traveled up from Philadelphia to do research in New York City. I spent many afternoons sitting in the library working on my manuscript and browsing the Club’s excellent collection of history books. I’d especially like to thank fellow historians John Steele Gordon and David White for their counsel during the writing process, as well as fellow members E. Holland Low (direct descendant of Captain Charles Porter Low), Stephen Perkins (relative of Captain Josiah Perkins Creesy), John Train (kin of Enoch Train), and Lucius Palmer (relative of Captain Nathaniel Brown Palmer) for their insights into their family histories. I’d also like to thank Tielman Van Vleck for introducing me to the Delanos, and for offering me words of encouragement during the writing process.

  While in New York, I also got to visit the Stad Amsterdam. This visiting Dutch-flagged clipper, completed in 2000, is the only square-rigged ship now plying the seas that is built according to original, extreme clipper principles. Despite a steel hull (rather than wood) and modern navigational and safety equipment, Stad Amsterdam illustrates the craft of her ancestors: the high rig, the sharp hull lines, and speeds exceeding fifteen knots. Her first officer Michaël Barbaix, was a wonderful resource for the art of seamanship on a square rigger. Thanks, Michaël, for keeping this body of knowledge alive into the twenty-first century.

  My parents, Amy and Grant Ujifusa, have been wellsprings of support and love my entire life. They encouraged my love of ships and the sea as a boy, and have been wonderful artistic compasses during my entire writing career. I would especially like to thank my father, who brought his immense knowledge of the English language to bear on several iterations of Barons of the Sea, as well as to my mother for her rigorous proofreading.

  Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Dr. Alexandra Vinograd, for her advice and support during so much of the writing and editing of Barons of the Sea. A writer needs a Rock of Gibraltar. She has been just that and so much more.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  © MAX GRUDZINSKI

  Steven Ujifusa received his AB in history from Harvard University and a master’s degree in historic preservation from the University of Pennsylvania. The Wall Street Journal named his first book, A Man and His Ship, one of the best nonfiction titles of 2012.

  Steven has given presentations across the country and on the high seas and has appeared as a guest on CBS Sunday Morning and NPR. A recipient of a MacDowell Colony fellowship and the Athenaeum of Philadelphia’s Literary Award, he lives with his wife and son in Philadelphia. Read more about him at www.stevenujifusa.com.

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  ALSO BY STEVEN UJIFUSA

  A Man and His Ship: America’s Greatest Naval Architect and His Quest to Build the S.S. United States

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  NOTES

  Prologue: The Patriarch

  1. Sara Delano Roosevelt, quoted in Geoffrey C. Ward, Before the Trumpet: Young Franklin Roosevelt 1882–1905 (New York: Harper and Row, 1985), 87.

  2. Ibid., 85.

  3. London Times, 1850, quoted in A. B. C. Whipple, The Seafarers: The Clipper Ships (Amsterdam: Time-Life Books, 1980), 71.

  4. J. D. B. DeBow, Statistical View of the United States, Seventh Census (Washington, DC: Beverley Tucker, Senate Printer, 1854), 164.

  5. Andrew Jackson Downing, The Architecture of Country Houses (New York: Dover, 1969), preface, Kindle edition.

  6. Rita Halle Kleeman, Gracious Lady: The Life of Sara Delano Roosevelt (New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1935), 27.

  7. Reverend Henry Woude, A Brief Memorial of Mr. Warren Delano, 1809–1898, undated, Collection of the Historical Society of Newburgh and the Highlands.

  8. Warren Delano II to Russell Sturgis, November 24, 1840, Papers of Warren Delano II, 5, General Correspondence, 1843–1891, Forbes, John Murray-Wood, Mrs. E. Wood, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library & Museum, Hyde Park, NY.

  9. John Perkins Cushing, Genealogy Finds: Documents with Ancestor’s Names, archives of Cynthia Owen Philip, Rhinecliff, NY, www.genealogyfinds.com/documents/bostoncushing.htm.

  10. Sara Delano Roosevelt, quoted in Ward, Before the Trumpet (1985), 90.

  Chapter 1: The Canton Silver Cup

  1. John Murray Forbes, Letters and Recollections of John Murray Forbes, vol. 1, ed. Sarah Forbes Hughes (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1899), 63–64.

  2. Basil Lubbock, The Opium Clippers (Boston: Charles E. Lauriat, 1933), 147.

  3. Amasa Delano, quoted in John Pomfret, The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present (New York: Henry Holt, 2016), 16.

  4. Frederic Delano Grant Jr., “A Fair, Honorable, and Legitimate Trade,” American Heritage 37, no. 5 (1986): www.americanheritage.com/content/“-fair-honorable-and-legitimate-trade”?page=7.

  5. William C. Hunter, Bits of Old China (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, 1885), 279.

  6. Warren Delano II to Robert Bennet Forbes, April 8, 1842, Delano Family Papers, II, Papers of Warren Delano II, 5, General Correspondence, Russell & Company—Wood, container 34A, FDR Library.

  7. Warren Delano II to Franklin Hughes Delano, November 11, 1838, Delano Family Papers, FDR Library.

  8. John Murray Forbes, Letters and Recollections, vol. 1, 83.

  9. Jacques M. Downs, The Golden Ghetto: The American Commercial Community at Canton and the Shaping of American China Policy, 1784–1844 (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, Kindle edition, 1997), location 4721 of 13153.

  10. Ibid.

  11. Frederick W. Williams, The Life and Letters of Samuel Wells Williams, 170, quoted in Peter Ward Fay, The Opium War, 1840–1842 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 21.

  12. Downs, Golden Ghetto (Kindle edition, 1997), location 619 of 13153.

  13. “Cohong,” Encyclopedia Britannica online, www.britannica.com/topic/cohong.

  14. John Wong, “Global Positioning: Houqua and His China Trade Partners in the Nineteenth Century” (doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, 2012), 119, http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:9282867.

  15. Abiel Abbot Low to William Henry Low II, November 12, 1837, Elma Loines, ed., The China Trade Post-Bag of the Seth Low Family of Salem and New York, 1829–1873 (Manchester, ME: Falmouth, 1953), 64.

  16. Grant Jr., “Fair, Honorable, and Legitimate Trade.”

  17. Downs, Golden Ghetto (Kindle edition, 1997), location 410 of 13153.

  18. Charles Porter Low, Some Recollections by Captain Charles P. Low, Commanding the Clipper Ships “Houqua,” “Jacob Bell,” “Samuel Russell,” and “N.B. Palmer,” in the China Trade, 1847–1873 (Boston: Geo. H. Ellis, 1906), 29.

  19. Larrie Ferreiro and Alexander Pollara, “Clippers, Yachts, and the False Promise of the Wave Line,” Physics Today 70, no. 7 (July 2017): 52, doi/10.1063/PT.3.3627.

  20. Arthur Hamilton Clark, The Clipper Ship Era (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1910), 30.

  21. Rosemarie W. N. Lamas, Everything in Style: Harriet Low’s Macau (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2006), 175–76.

  22. Diana Rosen, “Teas of Yore: Bohea, Hyson, and Congou,” Tea Muse, last modified October 1, 2003, www.teamuse.com/article_031001.html.

  23. Eric Jay Dolin, When America First Met China: An Exotic History of Tea, Drugs, and Money in the Age of Sail (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012), 8605.

  24. Frank Shyong, “American Ginseng Has a Loyal Chine
se Clientele,” Los Angeles Times online, February 28, 2015, www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-adv-ginseng-american-20150301-story.html.

  25. Amasa Delano, A Narrative of Voyages and Travels in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres (Boston: E. G. House, 1817), 542.

  26. James M. Lindgren, “ ‘Let Us Idealize Old Types of Manhood’: The New Bedford Whaling Museum, 1903–1941,” New England Quarterly 72, no. 2 (June 1999): 165.

  27. Charles Francis Adams, quoted in Lindgren, “ ‘Let Us Idealize Old Types of Manhood,’ ” 165.

  28. Frederic A. Delano, Warren Delano (II) 1809–1898 and Catherine Robbins (Lyman) Delano 1825–1896 (Newburgh, NY: Collection of the Historical Society of Newburgh and the Highlands, 1928), 4.

  29. Christopher J. Richard, “The Academy: Old Fairhaven’s Civic Center,” Fairhaven, MA, History, accessed November 16, 2015, http://fairhavenhistory.blogspot.com/2011/12/academy-old-fairhavens-civic-center.html. Original source: Charles A. Harris, Old-Time Fairhaven, vol. 3.

  30. L. Elsa Loeber and Walter Barrett, “A Profile of Moses Hicks Grinnell,” Grinnell Family Association of America, accessed April 11, 2016, www.grinnellfamily.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=78&Itemid=68.

  31. Joseph Alfred Scoville, The Old Merchants of New York City (New York: Geo. W. Carleton, 1862), 28.

  32. Scott Reynolds Nelson, A Nation of Deadbeats: An Uncommon History of America’s Financial Disasters (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012), 15.

  33. Ibid.

  34. Joseph Alfred Scoville, quoted in Robert Greenhalgh Albion, Square-Riggers on a Schedule: The New York Sailing Packets to England, France, and the Cotton Ports (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1938), 121.

  35. Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast (Lexington, KY: Seven Treasures, 2008), 102.

  36. Ralph Delahaye Paine, The Old Merchant Marine: A Chronicle of Ships and Sailors (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1919), 161.

  37. “Life on a Whaleship,” New Bedford Whaling Museum, accessed November 14, 2016, www.whalingmuseum.org/learn/research-topics/overview-of-north-american-whaling/life-aboard.

  38. Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast, 37.

  39. Abiel Abbot Low to William Henry Low II, November 12, 1837, Loines, China Trade Post-Bag, 63.

  40. Joseph Grinnell to Warren Delano, December 31, 1835, Delano Family Papers, II, Papers of Warren Delano II, 5, General Correspondence, Russell & Company—Wood, container 34A, FDR Library.

  41. Downs, Golden Ghetto (Kindle edition, 1997), location 3786 of 13153.

  42. Joseph Archer, February 12, 1838, quoted in Downs, Golden Ghetto (Kindle edition, 1997), location 3786 of 13153.

  Chapter 2: Breaking Into the Family

  1. Robert Bennet Forbes, Personal Reminiscences (Boston: Little, Brown, 1882), 145.

  2. Thomas G. Cary, Memoir of Thomas Handasyd Perkins (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1856), 46.

  3. Downs, Golden Ghetto, 85.

  4. Lubbock, Opium Clippers, 33.

  5. Ibid., 44.

  6. Houqua to John Murray Forbes, August 10, 1838, as quoted in John Murray Forbes, Letters and Recollections, vol. 1, 99.

  7. John Perkins Cushing to Margaret Forbes, c. 1819, quoted in Lubbock, Opium Clippers, 33.

  8. John Murray Forbes, Letters and Recollections, vol. 1, 46.

  9. Ibid., 40.

  10. Ibid., 49.

  11. Ibid., 72.

  12. “History of J. M. Forbes & Co.,” J. M. Forbes & Co., last modified December 2015, www.jmforbes.com/history.

  13. Houqua to John Murray Forbes, August 10, 1838, quoted in John Murray Forbes, Letters and Recollections, 99.

  14. “John Murray Forbes,” Spectator, October 28, 1899, 18, http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/28th-october-1899/18/john-murray-forbes.

  15. Robert Bennet Forbes to Rose Forbes, October 16, 1839. Phyllis Forbes Kerr, Letters from China: The Canton-Boston Correspondence of Robert Bennet Forbes, 1838–1840 (Mystic, CT: Mystic Seaport Museum, 1996), 63.

  16. Ibid., 62.

  17. Downs, Golden Ghetto (Kindle edition, 1997), location 9328 of 13153.

  18. Ward, Before the Trumpet: The Young Franklin Roosevelt, 1882–1905 (New York, NY: Perennial Library, 1986), 69.

  19. Ibid.

  20. Robert Bennet Forbes to Rose Forbes, October 16, 1839, Phyllis Forbes Kerr, Letters from China, 67.

  21. Other Merchants and Sea Captains of Old Boston (Boston: State Street Trust, 1919), 18.

  22. Cushing, Genealogy Finds.

  23. Robert Bennet Forbes to Rose Forbes, October 16, 1839, Phyllis Forbes Kerr, Letters from China, 67.

  24. Ibid., 69.

  25. Lubbock, Opium Clippers, 147.

  26. Ward, Before the Trumpet (1986), 71.

  27. Abiel Abbot Low to William Henry Low II, November 12, 1837, Loines, China Trade Post-Bag, 63.

  28. Harriet Low, quoted in Peter C. Perdue, “The Rise and Fall of the Canton Trade System II, Macau and Whampoa Anchorage,” MIT Visualizing Cultures, accessed October 28, 2013, http://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/rise_fall_canton_02/cw_essay02.html.

  29. Helen Augur, Tall Ships to Cathay (Garden City, NY: Doubleday 1951), 91.

  30. Lubbock, Opium Clippers, 33.

  31. William C. Hunter, Bits of Old China (London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, 1885), 267.

  32. Ibid., 38.

  33. Robert Bennet Forbes to Rose Forbes, January 25, 1839, Phyllis Forbes Kerr, Letters from China, 87–90.

  34. Ibid.

  35. Warren Delano II, quoted in Ward, Before the Trumpet (1986), 69.

  36. Hunter, Bits of Old China, 3, quoted in Ward, Before the Trumpet (1986), 69.

  Chapter 3: Opium Hostages

  1. Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (London, Walter Scott, 1821).

  2. Other Merchants and Sea Captains of Old Boston (Boston: State Street Trust Company, 1919), 23.

  3. Hall Gleason, Old Ships and ShipBuilding Days of Medford, 1630–1873 (West Medford, MA: J. C. Miller Jr., 1936), 59. [[Source: Library of Congress.]]

  4. Robert Bennet Forbes to Rose Forbes, March 10, 1839, Phyllis Forbes Kerr, Letters from China, 101.

  5. William C. Hunter, The “Fan Kwae” at Canton Before Treaty Days, 1825–1844 (London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, 1882), 117–20. [[Source: digitized book. See https://archive.org/details/fankwaeatcanton00huntgoog.]]

  6. Warren Delano, quoted in Karl E. Meyer, “Editorial Notebook: The Opium War’s Secret History,” New York Times online, June 28, 1997. Warren Delano’s daughter Sara was the mother of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

  7. Downs, Golden Ghetto (Kindle edition, 1997), locations 7738 and 8005 of 13153.

  8. Massachusetts Historical Society Forbes Reel 5, Number 26, Letters from Robert Bennet Forbes, quoted in Wong, “Global Positioning,” 119.

  9. Hunter, “Fan Kwae” at Canton, 117–20.

  10. Robert Bennet Forbes, Personal Reminiscences, 144.

  11. Ian Scott, “Heroin: A Hundred-Year Habit,” History Today 48, no. 6 (1998): www.historytoday.com/ian-scott/heroin-hundred-year-habit.

  12. Ward, Before the Trumpet (1985), 73.

  13. Hunter, Bits of Old China, 3, quoted in Ward, Before the Trumpet (1985), 74.

  14. Robert Bennet Forbes to Rose Forbes, April 19, 1839, Phyllis Forbes Kerr, Letters from China, 120.

  15. Friend of China, March 29, 1839, quoted in Lubbock, Opium Clippers, 167.

  16. Robert Bennet Forbes, Personal Reminiscences, 153.

  17. Warren Delano II to Russell Sturgis, November 24, 1840, Papers of Warren Delano II, 5, General Correspondence, 1843–1891, Forbes, John Murray-Wood, Mrs. E. Wood, FDR Library.

  18. Warren Delano II to A. A. Low, December 23, 1840, Warren Delano II to Robert Bennet Forbes, November 25, 1840, Delano Family Papers, Papers of Warren Delano II, 5, General Correspondence, Russell & Company—Wood, container 34A, FDR Library.

  19. Grant Jr., “Fair, Honorable, and Legitimate Trade.”

 
; 20. Ibid.

  21. William Jardine, quoted in Tristram Hunt, Cities of Empire: The British Colonies and the Creation of the Urban World (New York: Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt, 2014), 236.

  22. Extract of G. Nye Jr. to R. B. Forbes, July 3, 1840, Delano Family Papers, II, Papers of Warren Delano II, 5, Generation Correspondence, box 34, FDR Library.

  23. Grant Jr., “Fair, Honorable, and Legitimate Trade.”

  24. Warren Delano to Edward King, February 24, 1841, Delano Family Papers, Papers of Warren Delano II, 5, General Correspondence, Russell & Company—Wood, container 34A, FDR Library.

  25. Warren Delano II to A. A. Low, September 30, 1840, Papers of Warren Delano II, 5, General Correspondence, 1843–1891, Forbes, John Murray-Wood, Mrs. E. Wood, FDR Library.

  26. Grant Jr., “Fair, Honorable, and Legitimate Trade.”

  27. Warren Delano II to Russell Sturgis, May 12, 1841, Delano Family Papers, Papers of Warren Delano II, 5, General Correspondence, Russell & Company—Wood, container 34A, FDR Library.

  28. Warren Delano II to Robert Bennet Forbes, November 25, 1840, Delano Family Papers, Papers of Warren Delano II, 5, General Correspondence, Russell & Company—Wood, container 34A, FDR Library.

  29. Sarah Forbes Hughes, ed., Letters and Recollections of John Murray Forbes.

  30. Grant Jr., “Fair, Honorable, and Legitimate Trade.”

  31. Ibid.

  32. Warren Delano II to Robert Bennet Forbes, November 25, 1840, Delano Family Papers, Papers of Warren Delano II, 5, General Correspondence, Russell & Company—Wood, container 34A, FDR Library.

  33. William Henry Low to Josiah Low, quoted in Augur, Tall Ships to Cathay, 114.

  34. Shannon Butler, “The Journals of Edward Delano,” Delano Papers Project, June 25, 2014, http://delanopaperproject.tumblr.com/post/89895605925/the-journals-of-edward-delano.