Gotham_ A History of New York City to 1898 - Edwin G. Burrows [222]
A five-month return voyage brought the Empress of China back to New York on May 11, 1785, fifteen months after her departure. Her return caused a sensation. Local papers hailed it as a promise that the city would soon be out of the economic doldrums. New Yorkers could now look forward, said one, to “a future happy period in our being able to dispense with that burdensome and unnecessary traffick, which hitherto we have carried on with Europe—to the great prejudice of our rising empire. . . . Providence is countenancing our navigation to this new world.” Constable, Rucker, and Company of New York, whose partners included Robert Morris and Gouverneur Morris, easily sold the Empress of China’s cargo, returning profits of between thirty and forty thousand dollars to her investors.
This was a 30 percent return on their original investment, but given the time and risks involved, it was disappointing. So was the venality of Daniel Parker. Scarcely had the Empress of China cleared New York than Parker’s creditors began to hear rumors of certain irregularities in his accounts. He finally admitted to embezzling huge sums of money, then skipped to Europe, leaving Duer and other investors to sort things out. Angry, embarrassed, and teetering on the edge of disaster themselves, they were looking for ways to cut their losses even before the Empress of China returned to New York. Years of recrimination and litigation would follow.
Five ships left New York for China in 1786. There was excited talk around city taverns and coffeehouses about opening new routes to Russia too, and at least one New York vessel, Betsy, had already ventured out to Madras. In the decade or so to come, trade with China and the East Indies would make rich men of such merchants as John Pintard, John Broome, and Robert Lenox.
Isaac Sears wasn’t so lucky. After moving to Boston in 1777, Sears made a fortune during the war and was almost certainly the “Captain Sears of Boston” to whom Duer and his associates offered shares in the Empress of China in 1783. He too returned to New York late in 1783, moved into a mansion at Number 1 Broadway, opposite Bowling Green, and took an active part in the revitalization of the Sons of Liberty. By 1785, however, Sears was in trouble. Besieged by creditors, he pleaded immunity from arrest as a member of the Assembly and sailed for China. He died and was buried in Canton in October 1786.
The fate of the Empress of China—let alone what became of Isaac Sears—made it clear that no new trade route, even at a 30 percent rate of return, was in and of itself sufficient to ensure New York’s future prosperity. Two or three years after Evacuation Day, the fitful condition of business had become a subject of debate in local newspapers, taverns, and coffeehouses. It would also make Alexander Hamilton the man of the hour.
18
The Revolution Settlement
In February 1784, finally free from imperial constraints, a group of merchants assembled at the Coffee House to organize New York’s first bank. Banks were considered essential for commercial expansion, and proposals for one kind or another had been circulating around the city since before Evacuation Day. Hamilton had been trying to arrange something with Robert Morris’s Bank of North America at Philadelphia, but when the Coffee House meeting came out with an attractive proposal for a Bank of New York, he changed his mind and resolved to “fall in” with the project. He also helped turn the new bank into an instrument for reconciling former enemies and deflecting radical attacks on the Tories. Alexander McDougall became the bank’s first president; William Seton, a Tory, took the job of cashier. Its board of directors included Thomas Stoughton, lately arrived from England, and such prominent Tories as Joshua Waddington and Nicholas Low. Patriots like Melancton Smith, Marinus Willett, Isaac Sears, and John Lamb