Shreve Shipping Papers

Items from Series I. Shipping Papers include ships' papers, account books, memorandum books, accounts, and trade memoranda largely associated with Shreve's trading activities at Canton from 1813 to 1822. The digitized content found here contains papers from individual ships. The most complete documentation of trade in China is found among the papers of the ship China, and the brigs Canton, Comet, Governor Endicott, and New Hazard. The papers provide detailed information on trade in silks, export china, teas, and various textiles as well as descriptions of negotiations and agreements with Hong Kong merchants. Additionally, the papers of the ship China contain documentation of a cargo of opium.

Other items of interest in the ships' papers include a list of rations distributed on the US frigate Congress and a spar plan for the brig Dawn, which was named schooner Four Sons before her capture by the privateer schooner Fame in 1812. A letter from Shreve to his nephew Samuel V. Shreve contains the elder's advice on how to manage a mercantile voyage. It provides an intimate and detailed account of how ship masters and supercargoes managed sales and purchases of cargoes and how they were expected to conduct themselves in their trading activities (see ship Eliza, box 2, folder 5). The papers of brig George document a cargo of opium purchased at Malta and describe the capture of the vessel by the HMS Emulous while in route from Liverpool in 1812. Shreve's brig Washington was designed in the style of some other successful Salem vessels, and the brig's papers include shipbuilding accounts and papers associated with a pepper voyage to Sumatra in 1824. The bark William Gray was lost at sea in 1811, and the ship's papers describe the incident and Shreve's subsequent claims against the Danish government in 1831.

Please see the finding aid for a complete listing of ships' papers and additional information.