Bolts's Plan For A Voyage To The North West Coast of America
After Bolts returned from India in May 1781, he developed the idea for a voyage to the North West Coast of America to engage in the trade in sea otter furs to China and Japan. He apparently heard from John Reid, his agent at Canton (Guang Zhou), of the success the crew of James Cook’s ships had had there in November 1779 in selling the sea otter pelts they had obtained for trinkets on the American coast in the course of Cook’s third expedition to the Pacific. Bolts's ship, the Kaunitz (not to be confused with the Proli group's vessel of the same name), arrived back at Leghorn (Livorno) from Canton with this news on 8 July 1781. Bolts afterwards wrote that he had the ambition of wishing to be the first to profit from this new branch of trade. At an audience in Vienna in May 1782, Bolts discussed his plan with Emperor Joseph II, for which he had bought a ship in England in November 1781. The ship was called the Cobenzell (or Cobenzl) in honour of the Vice-Chancellor of State, Count Philipp Cobenzl (Kobenzl), a patron of the Imperial Company. Bolts’s plan called for the ship to round Cape Horn, take on furs at Nootka, sell or trade them in China and Japan, and return by the Cape of Good Hope. He engaged four sailors who had served under Cook, including George Dixon, who subsequently commanded the Queen Charlotte on a voyage to the North West coast for the Etches Company of London, and Heinrich Zimmermann, who had written an account in German of Cook's final voyage. He bought a sloop, the Trieste, as a tender, and obtained letters of credence from the Emperor to various rulers at whose ports the ship would touch.
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