Braided Waters. Wade Graham

lamps, tables, fireworks, velvets, satins, silks, fifty paper parasols, fifty silk hats, 135 pounds of large glass beads, and the like.”⁵⁹ The same year he participated as stakeholder in sending a cargo of sandalwood to Canton; while the voyage was not a financial success, the port charges levied by Chinese authorities at Canton inspired him to impose an eighty-dollar- per-ship harbor duty at Honolulu plus a twelve-dollar piloting fee.⁶⁰

      From the first European landfall in the eighteenth-century Pacific, control of trade was the name of the game. Cook strictly regulated which members of his crews were allowed to carry on trade. By the third voyage, he could write: “Knowing from experience, that if every body was allowed to traffick with the natives according to their own caprice, perpetual quarrels would ensue, to prevent this I ordered that particular person(s) should manage the traffick both on board and ashore, and prohibited the trade to all others.” On approaching Tahiti, Bligh wrote in his log: “2:00 PM. The Surgeon examined the Ships Company to discover those that were tainted with the Venereal disease. 5:00 PM. Took an Account of every Man’s Cloaths to prevent them trafficking them away.”⁶¹ If one were not vigilant, capricious trade would break out, just like venereal disease, and was equally unhealthy for the body of the mercantilist empire.