The Yankee who would not stay still: John Ledyard persuaded Americans to trade with China.

Today, a modern guidance counselor would tell the widowed mother of John Ledyard that her son suffered, no doubt, from a case of attention deficit or hyperactivity disorder. Ledyard was a Yankee who would not stay still and because of him the US began trade with China in 1785. Ledyard was the only American on Captain James Cook’s final voyage and the experience convinced the American wanderer that his country’s future was in Asia.

Ledyard was born in Groton, Conn. in 1751. His father, a merchant sea captain, died when Ledyard was a boy, causing the young Ledyard to be raised in the homes of various relations in Long Island and Connecticut. He enrolled in Dartmouth in 1772, but quit school the next year, traveled to Canada where he lived and studied with Indians, toyed with becoming minister or a lawyer, and then hired out to sea in the Mediterranean trade.

Ledyard found himself in England in 1776 and joined the crew of Captain James Cook as a corporal of marines, shipping out with the world famous explorer on Cook’s third voyage to the Pacific, where previous voyages had already led British to learn about and eventually settle Australia and New Zealand.  Cook’s third expedition, of the ships Discovery and Resolution, would discover Hawaii in 1778, but the explorer was killed in Hawaii in ’79. Ledyard’s written report to the Admiralty, and his later writer recollections of the Cook’s murder are the only eye witness testimony to the senseless killing of Cook after a beachside confrontation over stolen goods got out of hand.   

Ledyard stayed in British service until 1782, when he escaped off Long Island.  Ledyard was seized with the idea of Cook’s mission of finding the fabled Northwest Passage that would link Europe to the Pacific.  Ledyard became convinced that the US could travel through the Pacific to link with China – the dream that had driven explorers for centuries. Ledyard's original plan involved collecting fur pelts in the Pacific Northwest for sale in Canton.  Ledyard's early plan was premature, but fulfilled three decades later by John Jacob Astor, who set up a China fur trading outpost on the Columbia River near today's Portland, Ore.

Ledyard used his experience on Captain Cook’s expedition to talk up his idea in America. One who liked the idea was Robert Morris, the Philadelphia merchant who helped bankroll the Revolution, who acting upon Ledyard’s enthusiasm took a half-interest in a 32 meter, 3-masted ship being constructed in Boston by John Peck for Boston merchants, Benjamin Guild, Daniel Parker and others.  The ship was finished in 1783 and named The Empress of China.

Loaded with 29 tons of Hudson River Valley ginseng, $20,000 in silver, and 11 pipes of wine and brandy, together with some miscellaneous wares, The Empress of China left New York on February 22, 1784—George Washington's birthday—under command of Captain John Green.  Representing the merchants was Major Samuel Shaw, who would eventually become the first U.S. consul in Canton.

The Empress of China arrived at Whampoa, below Canton on China’s Pearl River, on August 28, after a journey of 18,000 miles in 128 days.  There were 33 other ships from Western nations that arrived in China that year.  The Yankee merchants sold their cargo for $291,000, a profit of nearly 30%.  The ship returned to New York loaded with tea, gold, silk and porcelain on May 11, 1785.  America’s China trade had begun.

As for John Ledyard, he could not sit sill for the first voyage.  He had set out for Europe in 1784 to begin an overland trek across Russia, Alaska, North America and to Virginia.  That was the plan Ledyard outlined to Amb. Thomas Jefferson in Paris in February 1786, who noted that Ledyard was “a man of genius, of some science and of fearless courage and enterprise.”  The author of the Declaration of Independence may have thought well of Ledyard, but Russians arrested him as a spy in 1788 in Siberia.  Ledyard returned to London in June and became employed by Sir Joseph Banks, another veteran of Cook’s early voyage, to explore the Niger River in West Africa.  On route, Ledyard died in January 1789 in Cairo of disease.  He was 37.

Another notable member of Cook’s crew was midshipman, George Vancouver, who would later explore the Pacific Northwest for Britain in 1791-94.  These explorations convinced Thomas Jefferson of the strategic necessity of America’s Northwest Territories, led to the Louisiana Purchase when Jefferson was president and caused the US third president to dispatch the expedition of Lewis & Clark to find an overland link to the Pacific and American trade with China.

Today, after just two centuries, the US and China, and all their partners and allies, are embarked on a journey together because trade, technology and economic development since those first voyages has integrated the world into one market – whether we like it or whether we're ready for it or not.  As far as links between East and West were concerned, Ledyard was just the first of millions who would not sit still.  (BBC, Forbes, F2)