Jun

29

We know that Morris had at least £11,250 sterling in January 1784 when Congress ratified the Treaty of Paris. That was the sum Morris contributed, as lead manager, to a subscription for “a vessel for the China trade”. The Empress of China venture would raise £27,000 – Morris’ £11,250, £6,750 from Daniel Parker, a New York merchant, £4,500 from John Holker, the French consul in Philadelphia, and £4,500 from other individual investors. The partners would buy a 360-ton, 18-gun sloop that had been built in Baltimore in 1783 as a privateer, convert it into a merchantman and load cargo in Philadelphia and New York: 30 tons of ginseng, 2,600 beaver and other furs, Spanish silver dollars, lead, pepper and naval stores (turpentine). The captain would be John Green. Green had served as captain of the Pennsylvania Navy sloop Aetna in 1776; in 1778 he had been captain of the brig Hope which is recorded as having captured £1,000 in prizes under its privateering commission. The Supercargo would be Samuel Shaw. Shaw had enlisted as an Ensign in the 3rd Massachusetts Regiment in 1775 after the Battles of Lexington and Concord. As Lieutenant, the Captain and then Major Shaw would serve under General Henry Knox as an artillery officer, then aide-de-camp and deputy adjutant general.

The Empress of China sailed from New York on February 22, 1784 with a crew of 34 (Green, Shaw, 2nd supercargo Thomas Randall, 2 carpenters, a barrel-maker and “several boys”). It would stop at the Cape Verde Islands for provisions in April, round the Cape of Good Hope, pass through the Sunda Strait (where it narrowly avoided a collision according to Green's logbook), and anchor at Whampoa on August 28, 1784. 1 of the crew would die in Canton of “illness”, and the ship would have £500 of repairs done while in port. Shaw would present a letter from Congress to the Chinese officials, and the Canton merchants would give Captain Green a painted fan with a portrait of the ship (the only image of the Empress of China that survives). Shaw’s September-December 1784 journal would record payments of £1,500 in duties and £500 for an interpreter. He and Randall would sell the ginseng for £6,000 and the furs for £4,000; they would buy 800 chests of tea (£15,000), 20,000 pairs of cotton trousers from Nanjing (£3,000), 64 tons of porcelain (£2,000), and silk fabrics (£1,500). The ship would weigh anchor at Whampoa on December 28 “with a fair wind”. They would sail around the Straits of Malacca, across the Indian Ocean, around the Cape of Good Hope and anchor at St. Helena on March 10 to take on water (£100). The carpenters would spend £50 in materials to repair minor leaks. According to Shaw’s logbook, the ship “Made land at New York, May 11, 1785, to great acclaim.” The cargo would be sold in Boston, New York and Philadelphia. Morris’ papers record a net profit of £6,250. What is puzzling is his calculation that this was only a 25% return on his investment of £11,250. What makes things curiouser and curiouser is that Daniel Parker will write to Morris that the venture has provided him with a “satisfactory return” and then flee to Britain 2 months later, leaving debts of £20,000 and the Empress of China put up for sale, advertised in the New York Packet as “copper-bottomed, scarcely two years old, fit for Indian with small expense.”

In 1785 he would purchase 100,000 acres in western Pennsylvania for £5000 and then sell half his holding in 1787 for the same amount. In 1786 he would invest £3,000 in the privateering schooner Dolphin; the following year the ship would record the sale of £3,000 in goods captured. In 1788 Morris' own balance sheet would show his liquid net assets at £20-30,000.

By 1790 Morris would purchase the Genesee Tract from the State of Massachusetts -1.5 million acres in the Genessee region of New York, paying £22,500. In 1791 he would buy the city block in Philadelphia (Chestnut-Walnut, Seventh-Eighth Streets) for £22,500. That same year Morris would launch the Delaware and Schuylkill Canal Company. Of its total £45,000 capital Morris would contribute £11,250. In 1793 he would sell 1 million acres of the Genesee Tract to the Holland Land Company for £75,000 and buy shares in the Bank of Pennsylvania (£4,500). In 1794 the work would begin on the Chestnut Street mansion, with Pierre Charles L’Enfant being paid £2,000 for design and supervision and £6,138 being spent that year on construction.

1795 would be the year of the very big deal. Morris, James Greenleaf and John Nicholson would form the North American Land Company; each would own 10,000 shares, and the venture would be capitalized at £675,000. It would own 6 million acres. Within 2 years (1797) Greenleaf and Nicholson would be in Prune Street Prison for bankruptcy. Morris would arrive there the following year (1798). Their collective unpaid debts would be in excess of £1,000,000.


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