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The American sailing men and merchants who sailed around the Horn from East Coast ports to China in the late 18th and early 19th centuries could buy no postcards of the exotic ports they frequented. Nor could they take snapshots of themselves, their ships, or their homes away from home to send to family and friends back in the United States. No news photographs immortalized exciting events in their lives.
They did have a substitute for these modern modes of communication, however—a substitute which, from the point of view of future generations, was far better. What began as a souvenir trade grew into a distinctive art form and a valuable permanent record of this era.
Paintings on canvas or glass depicting a particular ship at anchorage at Whampoa Reach near Canton or showing the sweeping Praya Grande at Macao were sent home in lieu of postcards and color slides.
7 he only known rendering of the Empress of China, first V. S. sbifi to engage in the China trade, appears on a fragile paper fan that is the property of the Historical Society of Philadelphia. The Empress, far left, is shown riding at anchor in Canton harbor fiying the new Stars and Stripes. 'Che fan was presented to the ship's captain. John Green, by Chinese merchants on the occasion of the departure from Canton in 1784.
72 U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, October 1972
Sea captains and merchants gave their families oil portraits instead of snapshots. Sailors sent coffee cups and plates to sweethearts and brides. (There were many versions of a "Sailor’s Farewell.” Plates and cups depicting the "Sailor’s Return” usually showed him showering gold into his loved one’s apron.) Porcelain plates exhorting crewmen to "Remember the Pacific” were forerunners of cruise books and plaques.
The authors of this painted history were journeymen Chinese artists and artisans, most of whom practiced their humble trade anonymously in large, factory-like studios. These artists worked to please the customer and to sell their wares. They were not sticklers for accuracy, and their illustrations of the contemporary scene must be taken with a grain of skepticism.
Fortunately, we also have written records to supplement this pictorial history. Newspaper accounts contain arrival and departure dates of ships and describe cargoes. Some ships’ records have been preserved, among them the log of the Empress of China and the bill of lading from the first voyage of the Experiment. Diaries—such as one kept by Major Samuel Shaw, supercargo in the Empress of China, and one written by Harriet Low, daughter of a prominent Salem merchant, during several years’ residence in Macao—supply colorful details.
Without the paintings of these Chinese artists, however, the history of this important maritime period would be not only less vivid, but also incomplete. For example, the only existing picture of the Empress of China, the ship which inaugurated the U. S.-China trade in 1784, appears on a fan presented to her captain by Chinese officials.
"Yesterday morning several vessels left the wharves,” announced the New York Packet and the American Advertiser for 23 February 1784, "among others the Empress of China, Captain Green, for Canton. The morning being pleasant drew a large party of gentlemen to the battery, congratulating each other on the pleasing prospect of so many large ships under sail in the bay . . . and all joined their wishes for the success of the Empress of China."
It seems, in retrospect, a rather matter-of-fact announcement of the dawn of an era that brought profound political, economic, and cultural repercussions as well as astounding commercial success. The Empress made a profit of $30,727—or 25%—on her first trip to China; the impact of the old empire and the new nation on each other was even more substantial.
Although American privateers had previously called at Chinese ports—an Englishman who visited Canton in 1767 reported the presence of some Americans whom the Chinese called "Second chop Englishmen”—the Empress was the first ship to fly the new U. S. flag to China. The white stars on a field of blue
made some impression on the Chinese, who differentiated Americans from other barbarians by the term "Flowery Flag Devils.” Still, recorded Major Samuel Shaw, the Empress’ supercargo and U. S. consul in Canton—the first U. S. consul there or anywhere:
", . . it was some time before the Chinese could full) comprehend the distinction between Englishmen and us. The) styled us the New People and when, by the map, we conveyed to them an idea of the extent of our country, with its present and increasing population, they were not a little pleased at the prospect of so considerable a market for the productions of their own empire.”
One of the productions sought by Shaw himself was painted porcelain. Late of General Washington’s staff and a loyal member of the Order of the Cincinnati, he wanted "something emblematic of the institution of the order” painted on a set of china. He recorded:
”, . . My idea was to have the American Cincinnatus, under the conduct of Minerva, regarding Fame . . ■ I procured two separate engravings of the godesses [and] an elegant figure of a military man . . . and furnished the painter with a copy of the emblems .... He was allowed to be the most eminent of his profession, but, after repeated trials, was unable to combine the figures with the least propriety, though there was not one of them which singly he could not copy with the greatest exactness. . . It is a general remark that the Chinese, though they can imitate most of the fine arts, do not possess any large portion of original genius.”
Though this general remark shows a perhaps surprising lack of appreciation for the traditional ethereal landscape painting and exquisitely glazed porcelain at which the Chinese excelled, it also reveals something of the Chinese attitude toward the fanqui or foreign devils. Assuming the barbarians too coarse to understand traditional Chinese art, the mercantile Chinese decided there was a profit to be made in copying things considered beautiful by the foreigners. Thus, Canton chinaware merchant Yam Shin-qua, advertising in the Providence Gazette for 12 May 1804:
"Regs leave respectfully to inform the American Merchants Supercargoes and Captains that he procures to be manufactured in the best Manner all sorts of China-ware with Arms, Cyphers and other Decorations (if required) on the most reasonable Terms.”
A Chinese scholar who happened to pay a visit to an export porcelain factory was appalled to see vast numbers of these Yang-ch’i or foreign pieces. "They sell them to the foreign devils to fill their markets,” he wrote. "The shapes are usually very strange, and there is no fixed pattern.”
Western customers, however, were less particular,
This bow! bears the insignia of the Order of the Cincinnati
and, especially in the early days of the U. S. trade with China, there was a great demand for Chinese porcelain. The Empress of China brought back six tons of porcelain on her initial voyage alone. Some Americans, like Major Shaw, had Western-style designs painted by Chinese artists on locally-made porcelain. This eventually developed into a sizeable industry in Chinese export wars, often erroneously called Lowestoft after a town in England where chinawarc of this type was later manufactured. Such porcelains arc basically outside the scope of this article, except where they were ornamented with American ships or by places familiar to Americans in China. The hongs, trading offices of the foreigners along the Canton waterfront, and the Dutch Folly Fort in the Pearl River Estuary, for example, adorned soup tureens, punchbowls, and plates sent home to the U. S. by merchants and seamen. Even after Chinese porcelain was usurped in popularity by English Staffordshire and European ware, these souvenir pieces continued to be shipped for a time. One of the last known ship portraits to be painted on china, dating probably from the 1830s, depicted the Union Line steamboat Philadelphia.
An earlier, more unusual souvenir was the paper and mother-of-pearl fan showing the Empress of China referred to earlier, which was presented to Captain Green on the ship’s departure from Canton. It was copied by Chinese craftsmen from Parisian fans, and since no other pictures of the ship exist, it is impossible to assess the accuracy with which the Chinese artists depicted this ship.
That the Chinese did not insist on accuracy in every detail of these ship portraits is illustrated by a porcelain punchbowl, dated 1786, which purports to show Elias Hasket Derby’s Grand Turk of Salem. It was presented to Captain West, skipper of this third U. S. ship to drop anchor at Canton, by the Chinese merchant Pin-qua. An identical ship appears on two other punchbowls dated the same year which purportedly depict the Alliance, a Revolutionary' War frigate later converted to an East Indiaman. In fact, the ship on all three punchbowls is an exact copy of the British ship Hall which appears on the frontispiece of Hutchinson’s Naval Architecture, published in 1777.
Inaccuracy was not always the rule, however. The Friendship, Salem plate of about 1820 appears to be an
74 U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, October 1972
actual portrait of that ship. It is entirely possible, though, that it was copied from a painting supplied by the captain or owner, such as one executed by British artist William Ward in 1799 or one by the Italian painter Giuseppi Fedi, which also antedated the Chinese version.
Although some of these ships and scenes may have been painted from life, most paintings were produced in factory-like studios. The models were pictures in books, decorations, and insignia from bills of lading—a popular source for china ornamentation—or, in some cases, the artist’s often faulty memory, which frequently produced inaccurate documentation of the contemporary scene. A French visitor to a Canton artist’s studio in 1850, one M. La Vollee found:
". . . several young Chinese were painting upon canvass [j/V] views of Canton and Macao and interior scenes. These are pictures which Europeans buy in great numbers . . . There is not an Englishman who on his return to Europe does not take back a view of Canton.
"Look at this, said Mr. B showing to me a copy they were making more than ten times I have pointed out to Lam-cjua the incorrectness of this picture. He will obstinately persist in leaving here the English factory which was burnt during the war, and there an open space which is now covered with houses. A few strokes of the pencil would make the view perfect, but he has taken the kink into his head and a hundred years would not eradicate it.
"Lam-qua was near us, and understood of what we were talking. He contented himself with shrugging his shoulders, and uttering a superb At a, as if to say 'Was it my fault that the factory was burnt?’”
Despite such failings, Chinese painters created vivid images of the lives and very restricted surroundings of the foreigners. From them, we have a legacy of documents depicting every detail of the lives of the old China hands, from buying tea to looking at the harbor through a spy glass, to raising a drinking glass, to resting in the Foreigners’ Cemetery, located on a small island leased to the French at Whampoa Reach.
Major Shaw vividly described this final activity in his journal:
" When any European dies at Canton, the chief of the nation to which he belongs sends and acquaints the different factories with the event. The flags are dropped, and remain at half-mast till the corpse is sent off to Whampoa, when they are hoisted up; the friends of the deceased, in the meanwhile, receiving visits of condolence from the other Europeans. The ships observe the same ceremony, and when the corpse appears in sight, the commodore of the nation to which it belongs begins to fire minute guns which are repeated by the other ships
in port, and continued till the corpse is interred, on French Island ....’’
A happier subject for artists was the row of trading offices along the Canton waterfront known as the Hongs or factories, a term derived from British East India Company parlance. Wrote Samuel Shaw:
"The factories at Canton, occupying less than a quarter of a mile in front, are situated on the bank of the river. The quay is enclosed by a rail-fence, which has stairs and a gate opening from the water to each factory, where all merchandise is received and sent away. The limits of the Europeans are extremely confined; there being, besides the quay, only a few streets in the suburbs, occupied by the trading people, which they are allowed to frequent. Europeans, after a dozen years’ residence, have not seen more than what the first month presented to view."
The innumerable paintings made of this restricted vista present a colorful picture: junks and sampans crowding the harbor and neat, gleaming white buildings fronting the quay, each displaying on a towering pole its national flag (which the artists did not always paint in actual colors). The Chinese did not attach much importance to perspective, and the rail fence described by Shaw sometimes appears smack up against the buildings, though each factory probably had a lawn. Part of this fence was destroyed in a fire in 1822 and not rebuilt again. Therefore, paintings with the fence intact are assumed to date from before 1822, though the observations of the French visitor cited above offer a caveat against such a neat and logical conclusion.
Another distinguishing landmark was the English church, built in 1847. Paintings in which this building appears, often as a strange, box-like structure, must date from after that time, although they are sometimes erroneously attributed to an earlier period. The church is probably a more reliable indicator of time than the fence. It is inconceivable that the artists would have invented such a structure before it was built, though entirely possible they might have omitted it afterward.
Until 1841, when the British acquired Hong Kong and China was forced to open more ports to Europeans, the foreigners’ sole refuge from the restrictions of Canton was Macao, the Portuguese settlement on the "hanging peninsula” at the mouth of the Pearl River. Wives and families, prohibited even in the barbarian quarters of the Celestial Kingdom, made their homes- away-from-home here.
"The situation of Macao is very pleasant,” wrote Major Shaw, "and the gentlemen belonging to the European nations trading at Canton are well accommodated there. As soon as their ships leave Canton, and the factors have settled their accounts with the Chinese, they return to Macao, where they must reside till the
ships of the next season arrive.”
Freed from the dormitory-style accommodations of the Canton factories, many merchants built gracious homes in Macao. Not all of the traders retired the full distance to Macao to indulge in gracious living; Thomas F. Hunt, a prominent merchant of the 1850s, kept a comfortable floating home at Whampoa Reach, the ship anchorage near Canton. These Western-style dwellings were duly recorded by Chinese artists, usually with palanquin-bearers or street vendors in the foreground to show that the scene was not Salem or Philadelphia. A favorite Macao vista, the Praya Grande °t esplanade, was also copied in great numbers.
Here traders and sailors could stroll to their hearts content. In Canton, by contrast, they were allotted only a small space which, according to French marine artist Auguste Borget writing in 1838,
". . . is at all times crowded by Chinese of every rank .... They therefore generally content themselves
with taking the air on the roofs on their houses when they cannot sail along the canals, which are, it appears, neutral ground,”
Several Western artists, including the previously mentioned Borget, visited China, but only one stayed long enough to exert significant influence on native painters. This was the Englishman George Chinnery, who fled to Macao in 1825, a fugitive from wife and creditors, and resided there until his death in 1852. A portly, witty, very amiable gentleman, he has appeared in fiction under the pseudonym "Aristotle Quance” in James Clavell’s 1960s’ bestseller, Tai-pan. He was also portrayed very sympathetically by young Harriet Low, daughter of the Salem merchant A. A. Low, who spent several years in Macao with her aunt and uncle.
"He has excellent sense,” she wrote in a diary kept for her sister back home, "and plumes himself upon being, though not handsome, excessively genteel;’ his personal appearance, 1 think, however, is rather against
him, for he is what I call fascinatingly ugly, and what with a habit he has of distorting his features in a most un-Christian manner... I think, were he not so agreeable, he would be intolerable.”
Chinnery’s landscapes, some in oils but most in watercolor or pencil, were much imitated by his Chinese colleagues and pupils. Though there have undoubtedly been some successful imitations which even today pass for Chinnerys, most of the Chinese painters did not capture his style and their works appear, by comparison, rather two-dimensional and heavy-handed.
His portraits were his more important works and he spent more time on them, probably because they
gave him the wherewithal to continue his pleasant existence in Macao. He painted many members of the foreign community: sea captains, consuls, merchants and their ladies. His charming portrait of Harriet Low puts him in the front ranks of portraitists. "The likeness is said by every one to be perfect,” she recorded. "They say I must have run against the canvas and left an impression there.” From his fine self-portrait, painted about 1826 for American consul Benjamin Chew Wilcocks, we can perceive something of the character of this droll, somewhat tragicomic figure.
Chinnery also did some scenery painting. Harriet Low in 1829 reported attending an amateur theatrical
Yankees in Chinu Ports 77
in which Chinncry not only supplied the backdrops, but also played one of the female characters—Miss Lucretia McTab in The Poor Gentleman by Colman.
Chinnery’s pupils were more successful in imitating his portraits than his landscapes, so successful in fact that there are more "Chinncry portraits” extant today than the expatriate artist could possibly have painted. Possible clues to the authenticity of a "Chinncry” are the superior quality of the canvas and the medium mixed with the paint. The better Chinese artists imported paints for Western-style works, but they often used any old cloth rather than canvas, sometimes just paper attached to cheap cotton cloth. These "canvases” are now often split and rotted at the edges. And, even if high quality paints were used, the Chinese oils and lacquers mixed with them, would have caused cracking and wrinkling.
The previously cited French visitor, M. La Vollee, called at the studio of one of Chinnery’s most talented followers:
"Lam-qita passes for the best painter at Canton. A Chinese painter! The artists of the Celestial Empire are certainly not Rubenses. Yon must not judge of them, however, by those grotesque designs in which the sheep walk on the tops of the houses. There are in China, and especially in Canton, several painters with long tails—Lam-qua, Ting-qua, Yin-qua, and other quas [Ed: qua is a Chinese honorific roughly equivalent to "esquire.”] whose pictures are much admired by the Chinese dignitaries, and are even sought for, curiosity apart, by European amateurs. One morning there came to the French hong an English gentleman who had been quite polite since my arrival at Canton in acting as my Cicerone. Instead of the white jacket and straw hat which Europeans usually wear during the heat of the day, he was enveloped in a coat cut in the last London style, tight trousers, and opera hat and superb white cravat . ... 7 am about to sit for my likeness.” He was going to Lam-qua for this purpose, and I willingly accepted his invitation to accompany him. A short walk through the narrow streets of the suburbs brought us to a little door, over which we read the sign in the midst of Chinese characters, 'Lam-qua, English and Chinese painter.’ Lam-qua can to a certain extent claim fellowship with the English school, having taken lessons front Mr. Chinnery, a European painter who had been long established in China.
"Ascending a staircase, we passed through a kind of shop hung with pictures and filled with young Chinamen, who were working on Lam-qua’s account. In the second room was the master himself, palette and brush in hand . . . Lam-qua received us with all the demonstrations of Chinese politeness. . . then, having exhausted in short conversation the English phrases of which he was master,
resumed his pencils and worked at my friend’s portrait ....
"When the sitting was over, Lam-qua did the honors of his gallery. Beside the wall were portraits of all kinds in progress, some mandarins ... some English officers, and a few Chinese ladies, whom Europeans can only see in pictures .... Accustomed to the types of face and dress peculiar to the Celestial Empire, Lam-qua naturally finds himself out of his element before a European countenance, and his pencil is sometimes so forgetful as to China-fy the English and American faces which sit to him. Perhaps he intends it as an act of flattery. At any rate, the caricature is quite innocent, and gives a spice of originality which is not always to be found in the model. ”
One favorite model painted by both Chinnery and his Chinese followers was Hou-qua, a co-hong merchant whose real name was Wu Ping-ch’ien. All foreign trade was conducted through this co-hong, a term explained by Major Shaw as:
. . expressing our idea of a trading company. This co-hong consists of ten or twelve merchants, who have the exclusive privilege of the European and country trade, for which they pay a considerable sum to the government . . .
Despite the suspicion with which the Westerners regarded all commercial transactions with the Chinese, Hou-qua became well beloved, his name a household word among merchant families at home and abroad. Americans never tired of citing his generosity in tearing up the $72,000 note of a homesick Bostonian. "You and I old flen,” they repeated, imitating the merchant’s pidgin, "You belong honest man only no got chance.” Proof of this esteem may be found in the numerous American homes and museums. George Chinnery painted him on commission from an East India Company agent resident in Canton. Chinnery’s Chinese pupils filled orders from others. Very probably Hou-qua actually sat for few of these portraits; otherwise he would have had little time to pursue his commercial duties. As a further tribute, Captain Nat Palmer and the merchant firm of A. A. Low named a ship after him. The Hou-qua, built in 1844, a year after the merchant’s death, was one of the prototype clipper ships. Until 1864, when she vanished in a typhoon between Yokahama and New York, she sailed with a carvcn image of the merchant as her figurehead.
There is a certain irony in the fact that the same year the Hou-qua was built, the foreigners forced the Chinese government to abolish the co-hong system. This was only one of the changes that were taking place in the China trade as a result of the Opium Wars. From the beginning, the biggest problems the
Yankees in China Ports 79
Yankees faced was what to sell the Chinese in return for the Oriental goods so popular in the American market: tea, cloth, and porcelain. The bills of lading of early ships list much gold and silver specie being exported, indicating an adverse balance of payments. Turpentine, varnish, rum, tobacco, and snuff were also listed, but the only thing the Chinese seemed to want in any quantity from the land of the New People was ginseng.
This herb, which grows abundantly in eastern North America, was used to make a tonic which the Chinese believed would cure ills and increase potency. (Ginseng’s potency as an export item has not diminished; until the establishment of the Peoples’ Republic, China was importing about $2 million worth per year from the United States. Since that time, U. S. ginseng, mainly from eastern Kentucky, had gone to Taiwan and Hong Kong at about $25 per pound. The recent trade thaw with the Peoples’ Republic of China may give a great boost to the American ginseng industry.)
Furs, too, were in demand, for use in lining the elaborate silk robes favored by the mandarins. This demand prompted a triangular trade between eastern U.S. ports, the Pacific Northwest, and China. An early entrepreneur in this trade was John Jacob Astor.
Another triangular trade was carried on between New England, the South Pacific, and Canton. Yankee sailors first brought sandalwood from the isles to China, where it was used mainly for temple incense. Decimating the supply of these trees in a remarkably short time, the ingenious Yankees found beche de mer in the South Pacific. This gelatinous fish was prized by the Chinese as a soup ingredient. But none of these commodities had quite the buying power of another import: opium. Often heavily in debt to the co-hong merchants for large quantities of tea bought on credit, foreign mer- chants, like the addicts, turned to opium to solve their problems.
Major Shaw, as early as 1787, reported that opium was being smuggled through Macao. By about 1815, the opium trade has established a set pattern. The papers of William Law, a company agent who sailed from New York in the Lion that year, document this Suasi-legal procedure. Arriving on the South China c°ast in the summer of 1816, the Lion anchored briefly °ff Lintin Island at the mouth of the Pearl River. Ostensibly, the purpose of the ship’s stay here was to wait for a pilot to facilitate the rest of the trip. While at anchor, however, the Lion transferred her cargo of °pium to the special receiving ships at Lintin. The cargo would later find its way to Hou-qua, to whom baw’s company, Minturn and Champlin, was much in debt for previous shipments of tea.
By the 1840s and 50s, the illicit trade had become
even more open. Chinese artists depicted opiumreceiving ships at Whampoa, conveniently anchored beside such American opium carriers as R. B. Forbes’ schooner Brenda.
Conflict with the Chinese authorities eventually flared into the Opium Wars. This conflagration, which was to change the whole character of the China trade, is largely outside the scope of this article. It is interesting to note, however, that some of the incidents which figured in the conflict were portrayed by Chinese artists, the war correspondents of their era.
One of these paintings depicts the opium-trading schooner Mazeppa shown either before or after her escape from the clutches of U. S. Navy Commodore Lawrence Kearny. Kearny had been dispatched to China at the request of Americans there for protection during the war, which was officially between the Chinese and the British. He was also ordered to take action against any Americans engaged in the opium trade, despite official assurance from the U. S. consul that, to his knowledge, there were none. After due warning to the merchants, Kearney set about pursuing any U. S. ships involved in the trade. Though the Mazeppa eluded him, he did apprehend the Ariel, taking her papers and sending her to Macao. After Kearney’s departure, however, the Ariel quickly resumed opium operations.
To put the U. S. opium trade in perspective, it never had anywhere near the importance of the British commerce in this commodity. The United States was responsible for about 10% of all opium imported into China, and opium accounted for only about 10% of the total U. S. China trade. Nevertheless, the persistence of American merchants in carrying out this trade against the wishes of the Chinese government is interesting to remember in the light of current U. S. efforts to dissuade foreign governments from engaging in this commerce.
The burning of the Canton factories in 1856, an incident of the Second Opium War, was also recorded by an artist, with steam and sailing vessels and the Dutch Folly Fort included in the foreground for added buyer appeal.
The changed character of the postwar trade is reflected in the paintings of the new era. During the conflict, the Americans had profited by British losses. Seeking to continue this advantage after the war, Americans developed faster, sleeker ships. Many of these "clippers,” notably the Sea Witch, began to appear in paintings.
The backgrounds and settings changed as well as the ships. The Treaty of Nanking, whose privileges were extended to include the Americans in the subsequent Treaty of Wanghia, opened additional ports to foreign trade. Hong Kong, now a British possession, became
81
Yankees in China Ports
an important trade center and a favorite landscape subject for paintings sold to the foreigners. Its distinctive Peak, as well as Shanghai’s Bund, began appearing as the backdrop for ships. China trade paintings became known as "Treaty Port Paintings.”
American merchants, so long based in Canton, began to set up additional establishments in other ports. In Shanghai, however, this was not done without serious conflict with the British. As the treaties did not specify where in the newly-opened ports the foreigners were to live and conduct business, a scramble for the most advantageous sites ensued. The British quickly won from local authorities a monopoly on the most suitable land in Shanghai. When Henry G. Wolcott, representative of the U. S. firm of Russell and Company, set up business there, he had to secure his lease through the British consul. The situation was harmonious until Wolcott, granted a commission as honorary U. S. consul in Shanghai in 1845, proceeded to fly the American flag in front of his establishment. The British protested, and Wolcott eventually backed down. Subsequent honorary consuls were more stubborn, and the issue continued to be raised—and lowered—until an international agreement was reached in 1853.
Shanghai artists painted these controversial establishments, both with and without the Stars and Stripes. Though it is tempting to conclude that their paintings arc an accurate chronicle of the ups and downs of the dispute, this is not necessarily the case. In the first place, treaty port painters were quite capable of adding a flag to please the customer. In the second place, the honorary consul position was held by various merchants at different times and, since the paintings were rarely dated, it is impossible to distinguish between a reticent consul and a merchant who didn’t hold the position. One painting of the Shanghai waterfront which the Peabody Museum of Salem dates c. 1847 shows both the British and U. S. flags flying. Paintings depicting many factories with national flags no doubt date from after 1853, however.
Despite these new opportunities for trade, American shipping declined markedly in the 1860s. Interrupted by the Civil War, the China trade never regained its former importance. For adventure, romance, and profit, Americans were turning more and more away from the Far East and toward their own Far West.
The demise of American merchant shipping in China was postponed for a time because of the fact that it was channeled into new endeavors. Some shipping firms found profits in the transport of coolies. A painting of Whampoa Reach in this later period shows two ships fitted for carrying coolies to Chile. One of these, the Troubadour, flew the Stars and Stripes.
The treaties of the 1840s, by opening new ports and
permitting foreign ships to navigate the Yangtze River as far as Hankow, created a coastwise and internal shipping industry. This coincided with technical improvements in steam navigation. The result was a sizeable fleet of small steamers under foreign flags, including many under the Stars and Stripes. Steamboats were seen in Asian waters as early as the 1830s and promptly began appearing in Chinese paintings. By the late 1850s and 1860s, they almost outnumbered sailing ships. One eclectic painting of Canton harbor included two steamers, a brig, two-oared shells, and several native junks.
By the late 1870s, Chinese and Japanese merchants had purchased many of the coastwise ships under U. S. registry, and American ships practically disappeared from Chinese waters. With a whimper rather than a bang, a romantic era came to an end.
The China trade never amounted to more than about 7% of the total U. S. trade. The side effects of this trade—the souvenir paintings and porcelains—had an impact disproportionate to the commercial importance. It is doubtful that U. S. trade with other parts of the globe left a comparable artistic legacy.
American seamen are again in Asian waters. With the apparent improvement in U. S. relations with the People’s Republic of China, they may soon be visiting the old haunts of their spiritual ancestors in the China trade. Newspaper photographers can record their exploits with an exactitude shrugged off by the Chinese painters of old. Postcards can convey to those back home a clearer picture of the wanderer’s surroundings; shipmates with new Japanese cameras can produce snapshots quicker and cheaper than Chinnery portraits. Souvenir paintings of junks in Hong Kong harbor are turned out in great numbers by Chinese artists—and scorned or ignored by contemporary critics just as the old China trade paintings were. It is interesting to speculate whether such photographs and souvenirs will be valued as highly a century or two hence as a portrait of Hou-qua or a ship-painted porcelain is today.
A graduate of Hamilton College in 1962, Lieutenant Oman served as a Foreign Service Officer in Saudi Arabia for the Department of State before entering the Navy. A veteran of two WcstPac deployments with Patrol Squadron Forty, he served as Tactical Coordinator aboard P-5 Marlins and P-3B Orions. After his release from active duty, he served as a speech writer and press aide for Senator Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania. Presently in his second year at Georgetown Law School, Lieutenant Oman flys P-3As as a Reservist with Patrol Squadron Sixty-Fight at Patuxent River, Maryland, and plans to practice maritime law after graduation.