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 government and undeveloped resources, to enter into competition for its share of the commerce of the islands in and the countries bordering on the great ocean. But the hardy American mariners, who had been trained in the fisheries and the colonial trade, and had had their courage tested in the Revolutionary War by a contest with the greatest maritime power of the world, entered upon this competition with a spirit of enterprise rarely equaled.

In the first year after the treaty of peace and independence with Great Britain was signed, on the 30th of August, 1784, the American ship The Empress of China, of New York, commanded by Captain John Green, with Samuel Shaw as supercargo, bore the flag of the United States for the first time into the port of Canton, China. The record of the voyage and the reception of the vessel in China, as found in the published narrative and the report made to the government is full of interest. In a letter to the Secretary of State, transmitted to the Continental Congress, the supercargo communicates, "for the information of the fathers of the country," an account of "the respect with which their flag has been treated in that distant region, … and the attention of the Chinese attracted toward a people of whom they have hitherto had but very confused ideas; and which seemed to place the Americans in a more conspicuous point of view than has commonly attended the introduction of other nations into that ancient and extensive empire."