Robert Bennet Forbes - Voyages and Seafaring Career

Voyages and Seafaring Career

"On October 19, 1817, then aged thirteen years, he shipped before the mast in the Canton Packet and made his first voyage to China, arriving at Canton in March of the following year, the vessel having sailed by the eastern passage. "Here," says the captain in his narrative, began an epoch in my life which was of great importance: a connection which led directly to fortune and which never ended but with the life of my cousin (John P. Cushing, then head of the house of Perkins & Co., Canton), in April 1861." In June, 1818, he returned to Boston, and thus ended his first voyage to China and return. In 1819 he made a second voyage to the Orient in the Canton Packet and on the passage made a thorough study of navigation; and on his next voyage to the far east it was as third mate of the ship. From this rank he became second mate in 1821, and in 1825 as master of the Nile he sailed for Manila, Philippine Islands. Previous to this time he had been for a short time master of the Levant, and thus was captain of a deep sea vessel before he had attained the age of twenty years. From Manila the Nile went to China, thence to California, and from there to Buenos Aires, South America; and thence to Boston at the end of a long and successful trading voyage. In 1828 he sailed the Danube for Sturgis & Perkins on a trading voyage to Smyrna, Turkey, and other European ports, and afterward he commanded the Niantic. About 1832 he made his last voyage to China and in 1840 became head of Russell & Company, the largest American commercial house in China. Of his large means he made generous provision for his mother and younger brother. He visited China several times and at one time was American vice consul at Canton. He traded between the United States, China, Europe. California and South America and was almost invariably successful in his voyages."