Barons of the Sea

by Steven Ujifusa

  Perkins and Russell knew American success would rest on favorable ties with the Chinese Cohong, the guild that held the monopoly on foreign trade. And no member of that guild was more important than its leader, the mighty Wu Ping-Chien, known to foreigners as Houqua. In portraits, a slight man with a wispy white beard and rather sad eyes, Houqua was in life a mandarin powerhouse, paying no mind to the dictates of the ancient Confucian social hierarchy, in which a merchant had no standing. Bedecked in shimmering silk robes and clattering jade necklaces, he met and entertained the fangai merchants so hated in China, building his fortune by selling, buying, and making loans against the foreigners’ future profits. He always made it a point to forgive debts to preserve a relationship. According to one story, when an American merchant owed him $100,000 (a full competence), Houqua told the desperate man in pidgin: “You and I are No 1. olo flen; you belong honest man, only no got chance.” He then opened his safe, ripped up the promissory notes, and threw them in the trash. “Just now have settee counter, alle finishee; you go, you please.”5

  Eventually worth some $26 million, Houqua became by far the richest merchant—perhaps the richest nonsovereign—in the world. However, his position was not without risk. As head of the Cohong, he was held personally responsible by the authorities for the foreigners’ good credit and law-abiding conduct. (Their illicit opium trading would become a source not only of profit but of danger to him.) What’s more, high-born Chinese resented his getting around the ancient, presumptive meritocracy. But in Canton, both Chinese and foreigners admired his mettle, brains, and money.

  To the Americans in Canton, Houqua held the keys to the Celestial Kingdom, the keys to the money. They revered him almost as if he were a deity. Perkins established a strong relationship with the great merchant early on. When Russell arrived, he too became a protégé. In fact, Houqua liked Russell so much that, to the chagrin of the British, he decided to do business exclusively with Americans—and in time with Russell’s firm almost exclusively. Eventually the numerous relations and partners of Russell & Company were to become Houqua’s surrogate sons. “You know it is an ambition common to my countrymen to have many sons,” he wrote one of them.6 As a businessman who dealt with foreigners, Houqua couldn’t wholly trust his fellow Chinese, especially the government in Peking, but he could create his own fraternity of impressionable young men.

  The fraternity soon included Perkins’s nephews Robert and John Murray Forbes, who arrived in Canton in the 1820s to carry on in their uncle’s footsteps, spending their bachelor days in China to develop connections and earn the competences they craved. The brothers were the poor relations of the Perkins clan, their father having failed as a merchant and died destitute. Robert and John had felt duty bound to provide for their mother, the colonel’s sister, and both eventually left school to go into Uncle Thomas’s business.

  Robert, age thirteen, went to sea on his uncle’s ships. “He has become so useful that I really regret to let him go away,” a cousin at home complained, “but as he has set out to make a sailor, it is best to let him persevere; and I will answer for his being at the top of his profession within a few years.”7 Dashing, adventurous, a lover of sea stories, Robert rose through the ranks to become a ship’s captain before joining the company in Canton.

  Younger brother John Murray preferred to keep his nose in the ledger books. Introverted and solemn, he had received a liberal education at a boarding school in Northampton, Massachusetts. Its lessons were not merely scholarly. Remembering his schooldays later, John wrote, “The history of my life at Round Hill School would not be complete if I forgot fisticuffs. My notion then as now was, after Polonius’ advice—Avoid getting into a fight by all honorable means, but, once in, so conduct the war that your adversary would not soon hanker after another.”8

  His father’s death had a profound effect on John’s outlook on life and business. While Robert sought adventure, John sought stability. His letters journal the intense family burden many of these young Americans felt when they left home to seek their fortunes in China. He remembered his mother’s “patient patching, my sister Emma’s vigilant eye to our wants, corporeal and spiritual, and especially the latter on Sunday afternoon, when she always read to us our Bible and hymns.”9 When he left Round Hill for Canton at the behest of Uncle Thomas, John must have been overwhelmed by the pressure to succeed. But at the same time, he knew that his reputation and future financial stability depended on his success.

  “You may be sure that I shall receive your advice and wishes as to my conduct as anything rather than those of a taskmaster, and I trust that I shall observe them more strictly than if they were so,” John wrote his brother Robert in 1828, as he prepared to set sail to join Robert in Canton. “I can hardly say that I was surprised at your determination as to my going to Canton. It is true that it must be painful to me to leave all our friends here, but I feel that it is better to make any sacrifice than to be a useless member of our family.”10

  Of the two brothers, it was John who forged the closest relationship with Houqua. He even looked a bit like a Yankee version of the great merchant, with a long, pinched face, prominent nose, high forehead, and prematurely receding hair. His tact and attention to detail led Houqua to transfer all of his tea business to Russell & Company, stipulating that John Forbes handle it personally.11

  When the younger brother, John, eventually returned to Boston, having “made his competence” in Canton, the connection with Houqua remained. As John began investing his wealth into American enterprises—including the era’s new transportation technology, railroads—Houqua entrusted him with a few hundred thousand dollars to invest and manage on the great merchant’s behalf.12

  To be awarded stewardship of such a huge chunk of foreign capital was unprecedented for an American businessman. And if the Russell men were masters of risk in tea speculation, they were extremely careful when it came to overseeing Houqua’s fortune. “Remember, security is my first object!” Houqua wrote regarding a shipment of teas and silks via Turkey. “I desire to run no unnecessary risks, and want, if possible to have the accounts closed early.”13 From Houqua, John learned the ultimate negotiating trick, as he explained to a relative: “The great art of making bargains is to find out other people’s ultimatum without letting out yours, and this can be done with most people by letting them talk.”14

  *

  Robert Forbes, too, had made his competence and returned to Boston, but his financial outcome was not as happy as his brother’s. In a series of setbacks following the Panic of 1837, triggered by rampant over speculation in Western states, he lost the fortune he had made in the China trade, as well as his townhouse on Temple Place in Boston’s tony Beacon Hill. At thirty-five, he was terrified of dying a melancholy, burned-out, and humiliated old man. He had to make a new competence. Leaving his wife, Rose, and infant son, Robert Jr., in Boston, Robert Forbes returned to China, resolved to take back his place as the head of Russell & Company in Canton.

  To get the position, Robert needed to replace the firm’s managing partner there, which he did by pressuring the man to return to his original employers in New York.15 Forbes then began canvassing the other Americans in the Factory to find a new partner and so grow the company. In a letter to his wife, he mused that “Russell Sturgis & Delano make an efficient house,” and would make ideal business partners.16

  Warren Delano, especially, must have been good company, for he and Forbes started dining together. The two combined work with social activity. They stuck close by other Yankees such as Sturgis (Robert’s second cousin and Delano’s boss) and Francis Hathaway of New Bedford (whose firm was the first tea trader Delano had worked for, at age sixteen). Forbes joined the Union Club of Canton, an elite group of “much sociability and festivity” founded by his younger brother John a few years earlier. “We are by rule all hosts & all guests wherever we go, have a supreme right to find fault with the wine or anything else & to call for whatever we want,” Robert Forbes wrote.
“[T]his abuse of constraint makes it pleasant, they meet weekly, go or not just as you please.”

  This was the inner circle of Americans and British who bonded over games of leapfrog on the dikes, cricket, and boat racing. While they played late-night games of whist, poorly paid junior clerks were abed in their stuffy little rooms in the Factories, worrying whether or not they would get tapped one day for membership.17 The blending of competition with bonhomie was always a difficult balance. Some of the younger men spilled out their hopes and fears in long letters back home. Others kept their thoughts to themselves, staring at the ceilings of their dark bedrooms as the smells of Cantonese cuisine, the rap of sandals against cobblestone, and the cries of beggars wafted into their rooms. In front of the Factories was an open public square, usually filled with hordes of unfortunates. “Cash, foreign devils, cash!” they shouted at passing Westerners, banging their tin cups on the pavement.18 Nearby, the only streets open to Westerners, Hog Lane and Old China Street, were narrow, dank alleys barely wide enough for two men to walk abreast. Hawkers hollered in pidgin at passing sailors, pushing everything from knickknacks to prostitutes.

  For his part, Delano learned that the best approach was to maintain a hardboiled exterior, not burdening his family back home with the sad or seamy side of Canton life. The camaraderie made life a bit easier. It helped that Forbes shared Delano’s love of boats and racing. Indeed, Robert, a bona fide sea captain, loved nothing more than a boat race, whether with oars or sail. There was a legendary story that once, while stocking up a cargo of sandalwood in Honolulu, he had challenged Captain Catesby Jones of the American sloop-of-war USS Peacock to a rowing race. Forbes later recalled proudly how Jones told him that it was a race “between gentlemen … for the trial of the speed of the boats and the endurance of the men.”19 It ended in a dispute over a buoy marker, so in this trial, the better man was not decided.

  As their friendship grew, Delano and Forbes spent evenings rowing together in the Not So Green, making their way between the junks, barges, and flower boats. His goal, Robert wrote, was to “exercise every day so as to win a silver cup.”20 After their workout, the men retired to the Factories to play whist until the wee hours, as Chinese servants brought them drinks and other refreshments. With the sun setting on the Pearl River, the men could forget about invoices and ship loading and concentrate on more personal matters: homesickness, fears of what awaited them in this strange place, their dislike of the English, Houqua’s generosity—and whether or not the mandarins would stop taking bribes and finally crack down on the opium trade by force.

  They also must have mused over Delano’s marriage prospects back home. When Forbes’s cousin John Perkins Cushing had returned to Boston from Canton several years earlier, bringing with him a huge fortune and a retinue of Chinese servants, beautiful young women had “beset him like bumblebees about a lump of sugar.”21 Cushing loved to visit the Boston mansion of his august uncle Thomas Perkins, with whom he frequently played backgammon and enjoyed the cambric teas, dipped toast, gingerbread toast, East Indian preserves, and other culinary memories of his time in China.22

  Warren could dream.

  Forbes was always thrilled to leave the confines of the countinghouse to be on the open water. In letters, he makes no mention of rowing the Not So Green with Delano in any of the Canton regattas. But in the fall regatta of 1838, Robert took the helm of the sailing yacht Ferret and piloted her to victory against the British competitors Rat and Mouse. After he beat the nearest rival by four minutes, the spectators on the water erupted into a “deafening shout of applause.” The sight of so many graceful sailing yachts, flying along silently like white-winged birds over the surface of the water, was thrilling. In his ships-captain viewpoint, Forbes thought that winning the sailing race “gave more satisfaction to the public than all the rowing matches.”23

  Boat racing was one of the few ways to break up the tedium of Canton life. In a letter to Rose—Forbes felt chummy enough with his wife that he freely told her about all of his shenanigans in the rowdy boys’ club that was Canton—the merchant could barely contain his excitement at his winnings: “Entrance fee $5—cost of boat race $15—gain a cup worth $75—deduct $20 as above—$55 dollar gain by boats thus far—& I have bought a sail boat!!! costing something over $200 but worth $300—gain thereby $100 hey!!!” Forbes must have then realized that his wife would be infuriated that he was spending money on yachts and skylarking with his coworkers while she was living in reduced circumstances and caring for their infant son. “Here comes the cloven foot say you,” his letter continued. “There’s the sock he has already split open.” Although, he added jauntily, “This is not so,” insisting that his more cautious (and still rich) brother John Murray Forbes would agree. “As John will say, health is capital here & health can only be retained by relaxation from the desk for an hour or two every day after dinner—the boat is my capital.”24

  As for Houqua, looking on as his protégés amused themselves, the old man hated the idea of any type of boat race. He disliked the betting that took place and feared that the illegal racing would attract the attention of the Chinese authorities. “Mus take care! Mus take care!” he would splutter.25 The advice fell on deaf ears. But his American sons never lost his friendship, and Houqua continued to offer a hand to new traders who impressed him. In the ultimate kiss of approval, Houqua invited Robert Forbes and Warren Delano to a dinner at his country villa on Honam, across the river from Canton.

  There Delano and the others marveled at the retreat the great merchant had created for himself. Decorative ponds shimmered in the golden glow of the morning sun. Lush shrubs and languid trees shaded the strolling paths. The various buildings were a riot of bright colors: blood red, periwinkle blue, and chocolate brown. Silk lanterns swung lazily from the eaves. In the marble-floored banquet hall, soft-footed servants started to serve the first course at noon. The delicacies flowed from the kitchen to the table until the wee hours of the morning: plovers’ eggs, sturgeon’s nose, sea slug soup, and other pungent dishes.26 The guests did their best to look grateful as they consumed food both gooey in texture and fiercely spicy. They dared not turn down a course, no matter how exotic. They rarely if ever ate Chinese food in the Factories, as their servants had been trained to serve them more familiar Yankee fare such as roast beef and boiled fish.

  But Houqua’s taste and hospitality made a lasting impression. The frail little man—clad in flowing silk, head topped with his customary red-buttoned mandarin cap—was a true merchant prince, unpretentious in manner but generous to those who had made him rich. As the dinner came to an end and Houqua bade the Americans good night, Warren Delano must have realized that he was no longer the mere son of a Yankee whaling captain. He was now Warren Delano, China merchant, a member of one of the most exclusive, secretive, and profitable clubs in the world.

  One wonders as he sailed down the swirling Pearl River, back to the confines of the Factories, if Delano’s thoughts strayed to the great Hudson River estates he had seen from afar as a teenager. Those were days of high adventure, when his father brought him to New York to witness the 1825 opening of the Erie Canal. Along the riverbanks, he had seen columned mansions of brick and stone, regal and remote as fairy castles. These were the homes of the old New York patroon families, landed gentry who in some instances had owned their vast manors since the seventeenth century: Stuyvesants, Van Rensselaers, Livingstons. To the Delanos, like most citizens of the young republic, the residents of these homes were as unapproachable as the Olympian gods. Their estates were mysteriously beautiful and grimly forbidding.

  Now, halfway around the world, Warren Delano had been welcomed through the gates of the promised land and hosted by a man far richer than any Livingston, in a house more beautiful than the finest mansion in the Hudson Valley. Perhaps he wondered if one day he might live in his own version of Houqua’s villa, where he could shelter his family in pastoral comfort and peace, far away from the cruel, ruthless sea from where hi
s forefathers had made their livelihoods.

  *

  As he occupied the world of the Pearl River, Delano would find that Houqua’s hospitality was legendary but offered only to those chosen few merchants—mostly Americans such as the Forbes brothers and Samuel Russell—whom the great man liked. Back in the Factories, the social scene tended toward British-style bacchanalia. Many of the Yankees did their best to abstain. But few wanted to be seen as a bluenose.

  One proud abstainer was Abiel Abbot Low, a key partner in Russell & Company. Low, called Abbot by his family, was a cautious, round-faced young man, measured in everything he did. His connection to the Russell firm came from his late uncle William Henry Low I, the first of the family to break into the China trade and a business partner of Samuel Russell. The Lows brought to Canton an austere Puritan ethos. These were men for whom opulence was utterly foreign, however enticing. Abbot knew sybaritic temptations could erode even the most diligent merchant. “If you have secured any permanent occupation at home, it would be well to stick with it,” he wrote his sensitive, dandyish younger brother, William Henry Low II, back in New York. “I find it impossible to acquire studious habits [in Canton]. You take care to do better, while you are younger. I mean to improve.”27

  Harriet Low, sister to the two brothers, who had spent time in China in the 1820s as a companion to their bachelor uncle, also took a harsh view of the social goings-on. Harriet had found Macao, where foreign women had to reside, enchanting—it looked like a bit of sunny Portugal brought over to China—and had once dressed up as a man to get a look at Canton, too. (The Chinese authorities quickly found her out and ordered her back to Macao.) Still, in their trips to Macao to visit their wives and families, Harriet saw Canton’s foreign merchant community at leisure. “The men are a good-for-nothing set of rascals,” she wrote in her journal. “All they care about is eating, drinking, and frolicking.”28