Morning of Fire

by Scott Ridley

  Once approved for trade with a “chop” permit, each ship had to be measured and have her cargo inspected. This was the task of a “hoppo” (English bastardization of the hu-pu, the Board of Revenue, which the bureaucrat served), who would oversee all of a ship’s transactions. The hoppo exacted a personal fee in the form of gifts, such as clocks, watches, perfume, snuffboxes, or other small marketable items, and could reciprocate with gifts as well, such as jars of wine or food. The fee was called a “cumshaw,” and as American traders learned, it was an essential piece of Chinese business etiquette. If the cumshaw was not paid, trade was not likely to occur.

  Most legitimate trade took place upriver at Canton, a two-or three-day journey up the Pearl River from Macao. To get to Canton, Chinese personnel had to be hired: linguists and towboatmen, as well as mandarin’s officers to escort the ship in vessels painted light blue with red or black eyes at the bow that were said to help guide merchants safely through shifting channels. Most ships arrived at the end of the southwest monsoon (April to September) and left again for Europe on a route around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope with the northeast monsoon (October to March).

  Whampoa was a dozen miles below Canton, and Gray’s crew stayed there under the guns of two forts. Cargo, officers, and foreign merchants were taken the remaining distance to the Canton waterfront, where “factories” for each nation stood in a row outside the city. These were three-story whitewashed warehouses bounded by an iron fence. Trade was conducted on the first floor, and living quarters were on the second and third floors. Outside flew the flag of the particular nationinhabiting that factory. Inside the factory, life was strictly regulated. Foreign merchants could leave only on escorted walks to small shops in a few streets just beyond the compound. Entry into Canton through the city’s twenty-five-foot walls was prohibited. No women or weapons were allowed in the factories. Merchants from the government-licensed “hong” would visit the first floor of the factory and offer tea, silk, porcelain, and other goods in trade for foreign cargo. The hong merchants dictated price and terms, and once up the river at Whampoa, foreign captains had little negotiating leverage. The longer they held out for a deal, the higher their costs. But there were other options.

  As Kendrick would discover, beneath Macao’s gilded officialdom was an equally blinding maze of clandestine transactions and smuggling that one could access with the right payments. At Macao, as in many seaports, the attitude was anything goes, and life in the small island city was filled with everything prohibited upriver. It was not yet a sinister fleshpot but was well on its way to becoming the primary port in China for drug trafficking. “Connivance fees” persuaded authorities to look the other way on ships kept as floating warehouses and foreign vessels willing to anchor in half-hidden bays. The whole arrangement seemed like a house of cards, and with one false step, all of it could come tumbling down on a foreign captain. Despite that risk, John Kendrick would soon find himself deeply immersed in clandestine China.

  ON JANUARY 27, HE SENT A BRIEF LETTER to Robert Gray and Richard Howe to let them know the Washington had arrived and to tell them he had made an application for “liberty to enter Typa but cannot obtain it.” He wanted to know the price of furs and asked for advice on how to proceed. At the factory in Canton, Gray was in his second month of struggling to sell their cargo of furs. He replied to Kendrick, sending him two letters from Joseph Barrell and undoubtedly others from home that had been posted to Barrell’s agents, Shaw and Randall. Gray said he was “very sorry to inform, that our business is attendedwith the greatest trouble and difficulty.” Mr. Randall, to whom the Columbia was consigned, was about to sail and could delay no longer. He positively declined to transact the business of the Washington. Gray recommended that Kendrick contact John McIntyre, an independent British merchant at Macao, and advised him, if the “weather be unfavorable, that you would run into dirty butter bay.” He also recommended a local pilot at the custom house. The recommendations were accompanied by a warning: “Should you go there [Dirty Butter Bay] be very cautious as several vessels have been boarded by the Ladroons.”

  Gray gave Kendrick the name of a “Compradore (buyer) who will supply you with necessarys for two or three weeks upon Credit—which is all that is at present in our power to do—the price of Skins is from fifty to seventy dollars provided you smuggle which in this port is impossible, without great danger.”

  One of the letters from Joseph Barrell was dated December 12, 1787, only six weeks after the expedition had left Boston. It laid out options for Kendrick to consider at Macao, and concluded, “everything is left to your own Judgment, being on the spot, and such is the confidence we repose in your Abilities and Honor …” Barrell closed with the salutation “Your Friend and Employer,” a phrase not found in any of his other letters.

  THE NEXT DAY, JANUARY 30, Kendrick took the Lady Washington about fifteen miles southwest, around the south point of Montanha Island, to an inlet on Inside Island known as Dirty Butter Bay, or Lark’s Bay. Across from the bay was Montanha’s Morgan Point, a hill rising more than six hundred feet. The high hills offered good protection from northeast monsoons sweeping the coast. The remote spot was also ideal for smuggling and all types of illegal activity.

  As the Washington came into the snug bay, they found two vessels without masts moored near the sandy beach off the island. These were hulks, floating warehouses for East India Company opium. Thedrug was shipped here from India in chests containing a picul (133 $ $ pounds) and held aboard the ship until the market price peaked, guaranteeing the best profit. Although the drug would soon be strictly prohibited by the emperor and carry penalties amounting to death, about two thousand chests were sold through Macao each year. Barrell’s agent Samuel Shaw, who also volunteered as American consul, said that the Portuguese governor was involved in the shipments, collecting as much as forty thousand dollars in two years, which the governor needed to support his household and administration.

  Armed men kept watch over the cargo and roused themselves at the Washington‘s approach. Kendrick’s men were also armed and ready, wary of the ladrones that Gray had warned of.

  Unlike the nearly barren hills and beaches of Macao, here underbrush grew luxuriantly to the water’s edge. The river was the same muddy yellow-brown, carrying silt from hills far inland. Sheltered from the steady wind in Macao Roads, flies swarmed out from shore. On the Broadway River running west of the island were sampans and houseboats on which families spent their entire lives. Men stood on the narrow decks with cormorant-like birds attached to long leashes, which they sent out to dive for fish. A ring around the bird’s neck prevented it from swallowing the catch. Onshore were small rice paddies and people washing clothes in the river. As soon as they anchored, Kendrick set men on armed watch until they could get more familiar with the bay. He dispatched others to find water and wood.

  Unknown to him, the situation was going from bad to worse. Not only did he have to sell the expedition’s cargo and protect his ship in this wayward mudhole, but he had to deal with potential hostility from the seizure of the Argonaut. Meares had been incredulous at the capture of his ships and men and the collapse of what seemed to be a foreordained Pacific plan. This was a huge blow to British trade and an affront to all of His Majesty’s subjects. Reading Duffin’s letters, he raged at Spain’s audacity. But it wasn’t just Spain. Meares was especially disturbed that the Americans went unmolested, and that Kendrick had used his gunsin the capture of the Argonaut. He concluded that Kendrick had put the Spanish commandant up to seizure of the ships so that he could control the fur trade and establish an American outpost.

  Before Meares left for London to place demands before the king and Parliament, word of the seizure and Kendrick’s involvement had rippled through Macao. Kendrick could not be sure what to expect. The Portuguese governor was a friend of Cavalho’s, who had partnered with Meares in the first voyage of the Iphigenia. Also, the East India Company, with which Meares was now allied, had the strongest tr
ading presence in the port. It leased a factory at Canton and occupied four houses along the Grande Playa on the Macao waterfront. The company’s local director occupied an estate that was the pride of the European community, containing ornate gardens and a prominent outcropping of rocks, known as the Rocks of Cameons. The company’s agents and perhaps Cavalho as well had anticipated Kendrick’s arrival.

  A few days after Kendrick anchored at Dirty Butter Bay, and quite by surprise, two men arrived with an armed guard and a translator. They carried a letter from Gray saying they were interested in purchasing the furs Kendrick had on board, which consisted of “320 Whole ones, 60 Garments, and 150 pieces both large and small,” in addition to the 137 skins entrusted to him by Martinez. Gray proposed that the payment be delivered to him at Canton because transporting money in boats passing up the river would offer a great risk of robbery. Kendrick refused the sale and sent back a message that he was considering bringing the Washington up to Canton.

  Gray wrote back to discourage him: “believe me Dear Sir you will have immeasurable difficultys to struggle against at this late period of the Seson.” Gray warned that, once Kendrick arrived, he would have to take whatever price was offered. He urged Kendrick to “remain below” where he would find “Merchants in abundance to take your Cargo off your hands and supply you with what ever articles you are in want of.”

  Two days later, Kendrick wrote to Gray that he was undecided about what he would do with the cargo and the Lady Washington,which a “portugeese Gentleman has it in agitation to purchase.” He also asked whether “articles suitable for the North West Trade” were available, indicating his interest to return to the Northwest Coast.

  Kendrick also asserted his command by asking Gray for a full account of the cargo on board the Columbia, and the quality of the tea, together with prices and what quantity would be sufficient to complete the ship’s lading. It was an accounting he would not receive.

  Fulfilling a promise made in Boston at the outset of the expedition, Kendrick sent artifacts he had gathered back to Salem for a new maritime museum (now the Peabody Essex Museum). His shipment would constitute the first native tools and artwork to arrive from the Northwest Coast. Once the shipment was off, Kendrick planned to go upriver to Canton, but he was falling ill.

  Gray was about to take full advantage of the situation. In a letter to Joseph Barrell, Gray claimed that he had carried only seven hundred skins and three hundred pieces to Macao. Questions later dogged this claim. The inventory of furs taken on board the Columbia at Clayoquot stops abruptly at the bottom of the page, with the number “700” written in at the side in a different hand. Another inventory, taken by the Columbia‘s agent Thomas Randall, showed that 1,215 skins were landed at Canton.

  The practice of officers and crew smuggling furs ashore for their own benefit was apparently widespread, although specifically prohibited in Barrell’s original orders. Furthermore, the prices of the furs fell as delays occurred over their sale. Randall was caught in a dispute between the hong merchants. The mandarin’s agent intervened and requested a selection of the best furs. Eventually, Randall was forced to relinquish all the Columbia‘s furs to the merchant Pinqua for a disappointing $21,400, approximately thirty dollars each. Nearly half of that revenue was eaten up by commissions and costs of a long stay at Whampoa, leaving a profit of only $11,241.51. With this money Gray purchased a homeward cargo of 221 chests of cheap Bohea tea. After such a dismal handling of the Columbia’s business, on February 9 Gray brought the ship downriver into stormy seas.

  In the bay, the Columbia was less than a dozen miles from where the Washington lay. Because he hadn’t heard from Gray, Kendrick sent a copy of his previous message upriver asking for an accounting. Again there was no response.

  Gray avoided contact with Kendrick. He was bent on his own plans, and perhaps anticipating the honor he would receive for America’s first circumnavigation. The stormy sky cleared on February 12, and Gray passed out of the harbor, taking no letters, commands, or instructions homeward.

  Kendrick was infuriated when he discovered Gray’s deception and insubordination, but was helpless to do anything. For weeks he was confined to ship, wracked by fever, perhaps from the foul water or from the pestilence that arrived on so many vessels. The foreigner’s graveyard at Macao gave grim testimony to how common death was among sailors suffering fevers that could not be treated. At one point his men believed he was going to die. Upriver at Whampoa, Kendrick’s comrade the New York revolutionary Isaac Sears, with whom he co-owned the privateer Count d’Estang, had been buried in 1786 after arriving with Samuel Shaw on one of the first American ships to China.

  THE DAYS WERE GROWING WARM AND HUMID, while at night the temperatures dropped into the fifties. Fever-wracked and without funds, Kendrick must have mulled over the depth of the expedition’s failure thus far, his own shortcomings, and the miserable situation in which he was mired. His son John had told Spanish officers that his father was sacrificing wealth for glory. And where was that glory now? Except for the furs in the hold, the Washington was destitute. Her sails had been confiscated as he fell into debt. Kendrick had no solid hold on any land or outposts and nothing to show for the last two years. Regrets about being so long absent from Huldah and his children with no end in sight must have depressed him, and he may have worried too about the fate of the men he’d left in the Sandwich Islands. There was opportunity,tremendous opportunity, especially with the British traders gone from the coast. But there was so much that needed to be done. In the pit of his illness, facing the bleak possibility that everything might end, he must have made promises to himself to accomplish what they had set out upon. The fever came and went, and as he had so often when events grew dire, he persevered. Somehow his constitution held, and his men were relieved when he recovered enough to come up on deck.

  Prospects brightened by the first few days of spring. Martinez’s prime furs sold for eight thousand dollars, and the Washington‘s own cargo fetched a price of eighteen thousand dollars. Unknown to Kendrick, this was far better than the trade Gray had made at Canton. Flush with cash, he began to lay out an ambitious plan for the return voyage to the Northwest Coast and the Sandwich Islands.

  The mornings on the island became foggy and damp. With the southwest monsoon season coming on, and still recovering his health, Kendrick took a house in Macao. The small, crowded city was a devil’s paradise, filled with what dazzled foreigners and natives alike: trade, lust, and corruption, playing out amid numerous Catholic churches, Buddhist temples, and religious festivals and celebrations. Facing the bay was the An-Ma temple, dedicated to the Queen of Heaven, guardian of fishermen and sailors. On March 23 each year, thousands would gather to celebrate her birthday and ask for protection of their boats. Kendrick was fascinated by it all.

  Night and day the narrow streets and alleys were an incredible melting pot of roving Pacific Islanders, Philippinos, Malays, Africans, Indians, dissolute Europeans, and wealthy merchants and gamblers, all under the watchful eyes of the mandarin and his informers. Kendrick wandered the narrow cobblestone lanes into the small stores that held a cornucopia of medicines, carved ivory and jewelry, cages filled with all kinds of birds and animals, exotic foods being cooked, fireworks shaped in rockets and pinwheels, and local wine called samshu.

  Happy to be alive after his illness, Kendrick purchased fireworks and other trading cargo for the Washington. He came to know thecharacters of the European enclave, and spent late nights drinking among traders, gamblers, and voyagers. A charismatic figure and a man marked with a reputation by the taking of Meares’s ships, the weathered American commander settled into Macao, and according to his later critics, the dissipate socializing drew him in and kept him there.

  But he was making his preparations, and the project he focused on lay at the center of a plan to carry out his mission. It was something he probably thought the first time he saw the Washington, something he must have sworn to accomplish as he lay ill. The Washingt
on was being transformed from a sloop into a brigantine, adding a second mast and a new set of sails and rigging. This would give her speed, reach, and greater maneuverability in narrow bays. It was no surprise that as the work took shape she began to look like the privateer Fanny he had rebuilt into a brigantine twelve years before on the shore of Dartmouth.

  A channel about a mile and a half north of Dirty Butter Bay led around Montanha Island to the back entrance of the Typa and Macao. During the day, crew members came to Macao in the ship’s boat and visited Kendrick with reports on the Washington. Otherwise, Kendrick traveled to the ship. Often the men came into town, drawn in part by the flower boats along the river, which held painted Chinese women and liquor. Unlike the Sandwich Islands and the Northwest Coast, such fraternizing was officially prohibited for foreigners. If the men were caught, it could mean severe punishment. Kendrick undoubtedly tried to keep the men protected and busy completing the changes to the Washington in time to make the season on the Northwest Coast.

  The humidity thickened as spring advanced. It rained and kept raining, and soon Kendrick’s good fortune turned. His house was broken into and robbed; the Chinese refused to grant him permission to leave the port; the Portuguese governor would not intervene; and he had difficulty getting provisions for his crew. He wasn’t sure if this was part of the retribution from Meares and the East India Company or pressure on him to sell the Washington.

  Stranded in port, Kendrick approached William Douglas for assistance Douglas had just left Meares’s merchant company and taken command of a New York schooner, the Grace. He was now sailing under an American flag, and whatever differences remained with Kendrick were put aside. The Washington‘s first mate, Davis Coolidge, joined Douglas as first officer on the Grace, and Kendrick made a deal with Douglas to have the Grace rendezvous with the men left at Hawaii gathering sandalwood.