The Massachusetts Historical Society is primarily a manuscript repository holding the papers of individuals and families that document the entire course of American history. The Society’s 1791 founding date means that in many instances it collected materials for the study of epochal events as they occurred. When the crews of the ships Columbia-Rediviva and Lady Washington set sail for Canton in September 1787 to open the Boston-China trade, they took with them medals struck to commemorate their “adventure” and—practical Yankees that they were—to exchange for goods along the way. Soon after the Columbia’s return to Boston in August 1790, the sponsors of the voyage sent a specimen of the medal to the newly-formed Historical Society in Boston, where it became one of the Society’s earliest numismatic acquisitions.
At the close of the Revolution, no longer subject to the monopoly of the British East India Company, New England merchants were eager to trade with the East Indies and with Canton in particular. The problem they faced was to secure desirable trade goods for sale in China. The ship Columbia and its consort, the sloop Lady Washington, sailed by way of Cape Horn to the Northwest Coast (giving the Columbia River its name on a later voyage) where they traded for sea otter furs, highly prized in China, and then on to the Hawaiian islands for sandalwood, and on to Canton. The Lady Washington stayed in the Pacific and made an unsuccessful attempt to open contact with Japan, but the Columbia returned triumphantly to Boston by sailing across the Indian Ocean and around the Cape of Good Hope, the first circumnavigation by an American-flagged ship. This first venture in the Boston-China trade was a commercial failure, but it did not stymie the enthusiasm of the ship’s financial backers, and in September 1790, only six weeks later, the Columbia was off again, on another multi-year voyage to Canton.
