When Benjamin Carter signed on as the Ann & Hope's ships surgeon, his life trajectory seemed unsettled.[5] His medical training at the University of Pennsylvania had ended in 1792. In the subsequent seven years he had wandered the country practicing medicine: first for just a year in Woodstock, Connecticut, and then for abbreviated stints in Charleston, South Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia. A possible end to this vagabonding materialized when his college classmate and brother-in-law Nicholas Brown, Jr. offered him a chance to work on board ship for the mercantile partnership of Brown and Ives. Nicholas Jr. was the senior member of the firm. The history of Carter's first voyage to Asia comes to us largely through the ship’s official log kept by Carter himself. Day by day in Canton, he notes each loading of cargo for the voyage home. 

As ship’s physician he had one ship's ton of "privilege" (the allotted cargo space for individual trade goods), the primary economic fruit of his engagement. He would enjoy increasing amounts of privilege on three subsequent ventures aboard Ann & Hope.  He was a shrewd trader,  quick to identify opportunities in any port; when he landed in Amsterdam in March 1803, he bought medicines he knew would bring a profit in New York; in St. Petersburg on this same trip, Russian goods were acquired for resale. However, the largest percentage of what was to become Carter’s “handsome competency” came from the sale of China goods.[6] The shipment he dispatched after his fourth trip to Canton in 1804 was insured for $7000, no doubt building on a nest egg earned from previous voyages. During 1805 he sent another $1600 worth of goods home.[7]

For nearly half a century, the China trade was the source of great fortunes gathered quickly. In six years Benjamin Bowen Carter had accumulated enough for a life of leisure and high social standing.  It is likely that his voyages also added to the family fortune through dealings on his father’s behalf, and subsequently through the engagement of his brothers in the China trade. In any case, the Canton connection was a most fortunate association for Carter.