Having sailed last week on the Hudson River sloop, Clearwater, a voyage by another Hudson River sloop came to mind. In 1785 the Hudson River sloop Experiment was only the second ship from the young American republic to sail to China.
Hudson River sloops were developed by the Dutch for the specific conditions in vast tidal estuary that is the Hudson River below Trenton. They are beamy with low freeboard and shallow draft. Their rig is simple – a huge mainsail to get he most of the often light air on the river. With such a simple rig they required only a small crew to sail them, though the mailsails could be so large that a shore gang was often used to raise the sail. The mainsail on the Clearwater for example weights 3,000 pounds.
All of which is long-winded way of saying that a Hudson River sloop might not be one’s first choice to sail intot he Atlantic, around the Cape of Good Hope, across the Indian Ocean and Java Sea to China. Nevertheless that is exactly what the Captain Stewart Dean did with a crew of only seven men and two boys on the aptly named Experiment in 1785.
The voyage was only a modest success due to the ship’s small size. The problem wasn’t the oceans which the small ship crossed without incident but the Chinese port taxes. “Dean discovered in Canton that the Chinese assessed very high port charges at a flat rate of $3,166 and disregarded the size of the ship. This put his tiny vessel at a severe disadvantage in comparison with other American ships arriving after her and contributed to the low return realized on this venture.”
To read more about this remarkable ship and her voyage to China: