This page was created by Julie Yue.  The last update was by Caroline Frank.

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When Benjamin Carter signed on as 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 somewhat longer but still abbreviated stints in Charleston, South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia. A possible end to this vagabonding existence materialized when his college classmate and brother-in-law Nicholas Brown, Jr offered a chance to work on board the ship that belonged to the partnership of Brown and Ives. Nicholas Jr. was the senior member of the firm. The history of this voyage comes to us largely through the ship’s official log kept by Carter. Day by day in Canton he notes each arrival of cargo for the voyage home. 

As ship’s physician he had one 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 trading China goods.[6] The shipment he dispatched after his fourth arrival in Canton in 1804 was insured for $7000.[7] no doubt building on a nest egg earned from previous voyages.   During 1805 he sent another $1600 worth of goods home.

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.
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[5] Returned from China in 1799 he would write to a friend: “For my part, I am as yet a vagrant without permanent residence or business…”
[6] A competency meant he had an income for life without a need to work.  The observation that his had a “handsome competency” came from his father (Robert W. Kenny,” Benjamin Bowen Carter, Physician Extraordinary,” Rhode Island History, vol. 16, no. 4, Kenny 1956, (October 1957), page 99. In Chambers's Encyclopædia: A Dictionary of Universal Knowledge for the People, Vol. 8, page 545, it is mentioned that Sir Michael Scott ha a handsome competency of £1000 annually. In 2014 this would have represented a commodity value of £70,800 or £1,086,000 in economic status value.
[7] Kenny 1956 p 102. In 2014 this shipment would amount to $130,000 in relative commodity value and 4,210,000 in economic status value.

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  1. "I Have Made Four Voyages to Canton:" Benjamin Bowen Carter, Chinese Bibliophile Caroline Frank