The Voyaging of the Mercury

The voyages of the ‘Mercury’, an 80-ton brig out of Providence, Rhode Island, demonstrate the immense contribution which the published accounts of Cook’s three voyages made to opening the Pacific to European commerce. Among other things, Cook had demonstrated the relative ease with which that vast body of uncharted ocean could be navigated, although, as Cook and Bligh discovered, the Pacific still had its dangers.

One of the principal reasons why the British government decided in August 1786 to establish a penal settlement in the south-west corner of the Pacific was to take advantage of the emerging commercial opportunities in that part of the world – the purchase of sea otter furs from Indigenous peoples on the north-west coast of America for sale to Chinese merchants at Canton, and the emergence of whale and seal fisheries.

Cook’s chart of the east coast of New Holland also opened a new route to China. Of the 14 merchant ships which carried convicts and stores to Botany Bay between 1787 and 1790, eight sailed to the Pearl River after they had unloaded, and carried home a cargo of tea on behalf of the East India Company.

Detail of Johan Zoffany, ‘The Death of Captain James Cook’, c.1795, UK National Maritime Museum

The 'Alliance' when she was a frigate in the Continental Navy during the American War of Independence

The first ship to use the eastern passage on her way to China was an American trader, the Alliance, Captain Read, which sailed up the coast of Australia on her way to China in the summer of 1787, shortly before the First Fleet made its way into Botany Bay. Her arrival at Huangpu, the river port for Canton, caught the East India Company’s supercargoes by surprise. As they reported:

"Arrived at Whampoa [the European name for Huangpu] on 30 December Alliance, 600 tons, Thomas Read. She left Philadelphia about the middle of June and it is said went to the Eastward, by the strait between New Zealand and New Holland. . . from what we can learn, it is thought to be a very good passage and might be very eligible for one of the Hon’ble Company’s direct ships sailing late." [1]

Her voyage was a huge commercial success: Alliance returned to Philadelphia in September 1788 with a cargo valued by some at £100,000 and others at half a million. The crew had suffered greatly from scurvy, with several dying, and the establishment of a British settlement at Port Jackson, on the south-east coast of New South Wales, offered a haven where American vessels could refresh and refit before pressing on to the Pearl River.

There was also the prospect of revenue from an outward cargo, particularly spirits, sold to the residents of this remote European settlement. The Chinese had little interest in European exports, and the tea trade relied heavily on silver, so bills of exchange made out by the NSW Governor, drawn on the British Treasury, provided an alternative source of finance.

However, the first American trader did not visit Sydney Cove until December 1792, five years after the arrival of the First Fleet, when the Hope, Benjamin Page, 208 tons, out of Providence, Rhode Island, touched there on her way to Canton. She was part-owned by John Brown, one of the pioneers of America’s China trade, and she touched at Port Jackson primarily to wood and water.

But she was also carrying a cargo of provisions, and the Acting Governor, Major Francis Grose of the NSW Corps, purchased a substantial quantity of spirits, that were sold to the military officers at a concessional rate and quickly on-sold to the convicts. Grose’s official secretary noted in his journal, ‘intoxication became common among them’. [2]

She was followed in June and July of 1794 by the Halcyon (177 tons) and the Hope (again), and in October of that year, the Mercury, also out of Providence, also owned by John Brown and Co. She was an 80-ton brig, 56’ 9” x 18’ 4” (roughly 17 metres long and 5.5 metres wide), with two decks and two masts, and a crew of 10 to 12.

The Mercury had spent twelve months at the Falklands Islands, killing seals (for their skins and oil), when a vessel arrived from Brown & Co, directing her master, William Barnett, to make his way to the north-west coast of North America to take in a cargo of sea otter furs. Barnett was joined by Robert Gardin (or Garden) sent down by Brown & Co. to act as their commercial agent or ‘supercargo’.

They spent three weeks trying to round Cape Horn, giving up when their rudder was broken in two by the strain. By good fortune, the gales subsided, the first calm they had enjoyed since leaving the Falklands, and they were able to clamp the rudder together with planks and make their way to Port Jackson by sailing round the Cape of Good Hope. Mercury put into Sydney Cove in mid-October 1794, to replace the rudder and enable her people to recuperate from scurvy.

Two months later, the crew having ‘perfectly recovered’, she made her way out of the harbour, bound for the North-West Coast of America. Barnett topped up his crew numbers by shipping five time-expired convicts who had permission from the Governor to depart. Several more attempted to escape on her but were caught before they could get aboard.

On her passage north-west across the Pacific, she touched at Kaua’i, the northernmost of the Hawaiian Islands, where more than half of the crew deserted. According to a captain who later spoke with Barnett on the North-West Coast:

"These People tired with their voyage, too easily sunk into the Lap of Pleasures which these Islands hold out to thoughtless Seamen and they all left the ship to live with the Natives Except two officers and two or three men, they had brought from Bottony Bay, transports whose time was expired." [3]

Trading relations on the North-West Coast were low-trust, and Barnett could not safely proceed with such a small crew:

"It was determined to seize some of the Islanders in place of the crew, and which they did confining them below till the Ship was out of sight of their Native Land – and these fine Fellows [served as] the Guard and Protection of the vessel at all Places while the others [were] Employed in the trade." [4]

How such an arrangement could possibly have worked it is difficult for us to understand, but on the available evidence, the islanders worked well with the European crew members, and they were returned to Kaua’i on the completion of the trading season at Nootka Sound. One of them seems to have stayed with the ship for several more years.

Mercury reached the North-West Coast in May 1795 and commenced trading. Barnett was quickly educated in the violent nature of the trade, and at some point in the next couple of months, Mercury assisted in a raid on a Native American settlement on Moresby Island (on the Haida Gwaii peninsular in what is now British Columbia), where the son and the brother of the local chief were seized and used to negotiate the liberation of a seaman who had been captured and enslaved several months earlier during violent exchanges between other American ships and the Haida.

In late September, Barnett was preparing to sail for Kuau’i and Canton, but on going ashore with several of the Hawaiian islanders to collect firewood for the voyage, he was speared. The Hawaiian men narrowly escaped, but according to their reports, the Haida immediately beat in Barnett’s skull and ripped open his stomach.

"Mr Gardin fired at them [from the Mercury] but without Effect, they sheltering themselves behind the Large trees. The vessel in the utmost Confusion cutt her Cables and Pushed out to Sea, leaving these infernal Cannibals rioting on the Flesh of their unhappy commander." [5]

Gardin returned the Hawaiians to Kuau’i in November, but there is no record of the Mercury at Whampoa in 1796. Based on subsequent events, it is likely that Gardin took her to Manila, the Spanish port in the Philippines, and sold the furs there. [6]

The next we hear of the Mercury is her arrival at Port Jackson in January 1797, having come from Manila under the command of Captain Peleg Rimington (or Remmington), with Gardin as the supercargo. They had put in for repairs, they said, because she was leaky, but given that Gardin sold around £3,200 worth of provisions to the NSW government, it is likely that this was a ruse. She did not sail again until the middle of June.

At Governor Hunter’s request, Rimington took the Mercury to Dusky Bay on the south-east coast of New Zealand’s South Island to rescue 35 men who had been stranded there when the Endeavour, a retired East Indiaman, was beached in late 1795. After delivering these men to Norfolk Island, Rimington sailed for the North-West Coast.

On her way, she touched at Tongatapu, one of the Friendly Islands, where seven of the crew deserted, one to join the missionaries, the others to join seamen and ex-convicts who had settled there as beachcombers. A number of the beachcombers were caught up in tribal wars, and the following year one of the Mercury’s deserters was killed.

Rimington did not proceed to the North-West Coast, probably because of the low crew numbers, taking the Mercury back to Manila, where she arrived on the 1st of January 1798.

By this time, if not when she sailed from Manila in late 1796, Gardin was using an American shipbroker, John Stuart Kerr, who had married a local woman and settled there. Kerr was doing business as an agent for American vessels while they were at the Philippines and serving as the de facto American Consul.

We next encounter the Mercury at Whampoa, where the Mercurius, Remmington, is reported as arriving from Manila on 26 March 1797, carrying $40,000 in silver on behalf of Spanish commercial interests. The Hong merchant Noeyqua was assigned as her security merchant. Having loaded her cargo, she passed out through the Bocca Tigris, the mouth of the Pearl River, on the 27th of April.

Mercury’s subsequent destination is unknown, but it is likely that she returned to Manila where she was sold or decommissioned, since her registration was surrendered at Providence in June 1799.

This 80-ton vessel with a crew of only 10 to 12, spent a year sealing in the south of the Atlantic Ocean, before attempting, unsuccessfully, to double Cape Horn so she could make her way to the North-West Coast of America. Having broken her rudder, she sailed east and rounded the Cape of Good Hope, crossing the Great Southern Ocean to refresh and repair 3,600 nautical miles away at Port Jackson.

After a respite of only two months, she proceeded to cross the Pacific from south-west to north-east, a voyage of some 7,000 nautical miles, touching briefly at one of the Hawaiian Islands. Having taken on a cargo of sea otter pelts on the North-West Coast of America, she sailed south-west, making her way some 6,000 miles to Manila.

She then sailed for Port Jackson with a cargo of trade goods, a voyage of around 3,400 nautical miles, and from there to the south-east coast of the South Island of New Zealand, then Tonga, as she made her way for the North-West Coast. This venture was abandoned, and she proceeded to Manila and thence to Canton, a distance of more than 8,000 nautical miles since leaving NSW.

After two years at sea with few fresh provisions, Mercury’s crew arrived at Sydney Cove in October 1794, suffering badly from scurvy. There is no hard evidence that any of her crew died, but Captain Barnett did take on board five time-expired convicts, which suggests that several of the men had passed away or were still too sick to sail. Twelve months later, Barnett himself was killed and at least one of the crew badly wounded by the Haida on the North-West Coast of America.

More than half of her crew deserted at Kuau’i in the spring of 1795, resulting in the master shanghaiing Pacific Islanders to supplement the crew. Seven deserted at Tongatapu two and a half years later, requiring the captain to abandon his plans of sailing to the North-West Coast.

The Pacific was no longer the fearsome and unknown beast which, until the voyages of Captain James Cook were published, caused Spanish galleons and British East Indiamen to stick closely to familiar sailing routes. By the 1790s, tiny vessels like the Mercury were confident in moving freely about the Pacific, although still not without some risk.
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As usual, for reasons of length, this Catspaw is not fully referenced. Readers wanting further detail on particular details are welcome to contact the author by email.

[1] Select Committee of Supercargoes to Court of Directors, 8 April 1788, British Library, India Office Records, G/12/89, p.9.

[2] David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, London: Cadell and Davies, 1798, p.260.

[3] Michael Roe (ed.), The Journal and Letters of Captain Charles Bishop on the North-West Coast of America, in the Pacific, and in New South Wales, 1794-1799, Cambridge: The Hakluyt Society, 1967, pp.100-101.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid., p.140.

[6] Paul A. Van Dyke, Whampoa and the Canton Trade, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2020, Appendix 1.2a: Ship Arrivals at Whampoa from 1720 to January 1816 (by year). Van Dyke has identified 3,364 vessels which arrived between 1720 and January 1816 (the timing based on the Chinese lunar year), of which he has identified 12 where the names are unknown, none falling in this period.

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