By MICHAEL SCHREIBER
Philadelphians with a sweet tooth in the 19th century owed a debt to Capt. James Barnes. Barnes spent most of his life in the sugar trade, plying the route between the Delaware River and the West Indies.
Barnes (sometimes spelled “Barns”) was born in 1819 to James and Elizabeth Barnes. James Sr. (ca. 1781-1866) worked most of his life as a “coach trimmer,” i.e., a person who designs and constructs the interiors of horse-drawn carriages. In 1819, the Barnes family lived at the rear of 106 Union Street (today Delancey St.); they moved the following year to 42 Prime Street (today Washington Avenue).(1)
On May 23, 1835, 16-year-old James Barnes Jr. was accompanied by his father on a visit to a magistrate in order to receive his seaman’s citizenship affidavit. This was an official affirmation that the young man was entitled to all protections as a U.S. citizen, which could help him to avoid being kidnapped to work on foreign warships, such as those of the British Royal Navy. He was described on the document as being 5 feet, one inch in height, with blue eyes, a light complexion, and light hair. He had a scar on the right side of his forehead, and the figure of an anchor with the letters “J.B.” tattooed on his left arm.
The tea trade: “Green gold”
A month later, James shipped out on the brig Latona to the other side of the world—to Canton, China.
The master of the vessel, Christian Gulager (1789-1863), had made the voyage to China several times before, beginning in December 1810, when he too signed up as an apprentice on Stephen Girard’s ship Montesquieu. That vessel sailed to Canton (now Gwangzhou) by way of Valparaiso, Chile, and did not return to the Delaware Capes until March 26, 1813—only to be captured there by a British armed schooner. The British refused to release the ship’s cargo, said to be worth $1.5 million, until Girard paid a hefty ransom. Within less than a decade, Gulager had become a ship captain himself, and by the time young James Barnes joined his crew, in 1835, he had already served at least twice as the master of vessels bound to China.(2)
The major Chinese commodity for U.S. wholesale merchants in the early 19th century was tea. At the time, the merchants often referred to tea leaves as “green gold.” They imported tea from China both for domestic consumption and for re-export to Europe. The U.S. became the second largest importer of tea, next to Britain. It remained a major beverage in the United States throughout much of the 19th century, surpassing the use of coffee until the late 1860s
Increasingly, after the early 1820s, the tea was exchanged in China for opium—most of which had been grown and refined in colonial India, originally under the promotion of the British East India Company. Western merchants were able to reap super-profits on both ends of the trade, distributing opium in China and tea in Europe and the United States. At the same time, Indian and Chinese peasants—who were forced to produce these cash crops for small gains rather than growing wheat, rice, and vegetables for people’s needs—encountered crushing debts and increasing impoverishment. American ships also brought opium from Turkey into China in order to get around the British monopoly.
The Latona was a relatively new vessel, built in Philadelphia in 1828, and she made the voyage to China on several occasions. With James Barnes aboard, the brig sailed from Philadelphia on June 20, 1835, stopped at the island of St. Helena—a British outpost off the southwest coast of Africa—and then rounded the Cape of Good Hope. By Sept. 24, she was reported to be at Anjeer, off the island of Java (it lies on the Sunda Strait, which connects the Indian Ocean with the South Pacific). By mid-December, the Latona had arrived at Whampoa (today Pazhou)—the international port on an island in the Pearl (Choo Keang) River, just below the city of Canton. Typically, the crates of tea, silks, and other items were purchased from the hongs (warehouses, or what the British called “factories”) in the foreign quarter of the city. The merchandise was then loaded onto junks and ferried downriver to the sea-going vessels that were moored at Whampoa.
When the Latona arrived in the Pearl River valley in December, it was still “tea season,” the period when the previous year’s harvest was still fresh and at its best. Unfortunately, the brig had arrived during a tense economic situation, which had festered for the past couple of years. Chinese authorities were protesting what they felt was rank exploitation by the West. They had recently raised the wholesale price of tea, and were resisting the flooding of opium into the country. A couple of years later, the tension would erupt into the first of the Opium Wars against the British.
According to a letter from Capt. Gulager, dated Dec. 22, 1835, which the supercargo of the Latona carried back to Philadelphia, there were about 17 foreign vessels at Whampoa at the time that the Latona was loading. However, “many of the vessels could not load in consequence of the high prices of teas, want of funds, and the difficulty of negotiation.”
The Lantona left Whampoa on Dec. 23, sailing together with the ships Silas Richards and Providence; a day later she passed Lintin Island, near the mouth of the Pearl River estuary. On Feb. 4, 1836, she passed through the Strait of Sunda, and entered the Indian Ocean. One hundred days after leaving Canton, the Lantona landed the supercargo at the Delaware capes and proceeded to New York City, landing there on April 4.
In New York, Capt. Gulager was interviewed by the Commercial Advertiser on April 6. He reported to the newspaper that Pang, the hoppo of Canton, had issued a “perspicuous edict” enjoining captains of foreign ships anchoring at Whampoa to keep their crews in order, and prevent them from “going on shore in parties, firing off fowling pieces, and killing birds.”
In the meantime, the Latona’s cargo of various teas was auctioned off to wholesalers at the Tontine Sales Rooms, on the corner of Wall and Water Streets. The Latona had also brought back lots of silks, chinaware, paintings, gunpowder, ginger, and oranges—which were available for sale at various venues. Also on board the vessel was a portrait of Capt. Gulager, which the master of the brig had commissioned from an artist in Canton named Lam Qua. Presumably, Gulager took the painting back to Philadelphia with him to hang in his house on Noble Street in the Northern Liberties.
Little has come to light about the life of James Barnes for the next 15 years or so. He was probably the “James Barnes,” age 19, who listed in Philadelphia Customs House ledgers as having joined the crew of the bark Lark to Rio de Janeiro. The vessel, commanded by Capt. William C. Lowry, departed Philadelphia on Nov. 23, 1838. She sailed from Rio on Feb. 4, 1839, and arrived home on April 4. The same year, a James Barnes, mariner, is mentioned in Philadelphia directories as living at 68 Union Street. From 1845 to at least 1853, James Barnes, mariner, is listed at 68 Queen Street. In the latter year, he is listed as Capt. James Barnes, denoting his new distinction as he undertook his first assignment as a sea captain, which we will describe below.(3)
James Barnes’s mother, Elizabeth, died in July 1846 at age 60 after a long illness. She was buried in the churchyard of Gloria Dei (Old Swedes’) Church. His father remarried three years later, on Nov. 13, 1849. James Senior was about 68 years old at the time of his second marriage; his wife, Mary Jane Abbot, was 39.
Less than a year later, the younger James Barnes also married. His wife, Mary Ann Frishmuth, was in her late teens.. For a while after her marriage, since James was often away at sea, Mary continued to reside with her widowed mother, Sarah Frishmuth, her younger siblings—Sarah A., 17, Emma, 15, and John, 13—and her grandmother, Ann McClain, 70, who was also a widow. The Barnes’s first child, Daniel, was born in 1852.
That year, a terrible famine broke out on the island of Madeira, off the coast of Africa, southeast of the Azores. James Barnes was chosen to command a vessel to carry relief supplies from Philadelphia to Madeira.
Carrying aid to famine sufferers in Madeira
Madeira had been colonized and settled by the Portuguese in the 1400s. Sugarcane soon became its main commodity, but after it became cheaper to grow sugar in the Americas by means of slave labor, the major export shifted to wine. Beginning in the 17th century, many British merchants settled on the island to engage in the wine trade. A diverse English-speaking community arose, and by the end of the 18th century, Madeira had become a virtual British colony. In the middle of the 18th century, some 95 percent of Madeira’s wine production went to the British colonies in America, which lacked a wine-making industry of any size. Men like John Hancock in New England grew wealthy in the mid-18th century by smuggling Madeira wine into the colonies to evade British duties.
Madeira wine was noted for being moderately sweet and acidic. It was generally fortified with brandy, giving it an alcohol content of about 20 percent. The wine gained flavor as it was allowed to age in the oaken barrels used to transport it across the Atlantic.
In 1851, Madeira’s grape vines were attacked by a powdery mildew called Odium tuckeri, which attacks the leaves and turns them white, eventually killing the entire plant. By 1852, the blight had spread around the entire island, destroying 90 percent of the grape vines; wine production declined by 98 percent. The severe drop in production was detailed in a letter written from the island to the New York Tribune in December 1852 (reprinted in the Milwaukee Sentinel, Jan. 13, 1853): “The annual vintage has afforded for many years past an average of twenty-five to thirty-five thousand pipes of Wine. There has not been produced this year one hundred pipes of saleable wine on the whole Island.”
Since wine was the main source of revenue (50 percent of the peasants worked in the grape fields), widespread unemployment ensued. Everybody was affected to one degree or another, but the poor took the brunt of the suffering. The correspondent to the Tribune wrote: “The wealthy curtail their expenditures; those of sufficient means heretofore practice a stringent economy; persons of more cramped resources sell day by day whatever ornaments they may have of better days, at ruinous prices, while the poorer classes fill the streets and beg. And this is but the beginning of the days of Famine.”
The economic crisis caused by the collapse of the wine trade was made worse by the simultaneous blight attacking the potato crops, which had hit Madeira beginning in around 1847. Potatoes were then the main staple food. Thousands were able to migrate to look for work on the sugar plantations of Guyana or the West Indies. Many others who remained suffered the effects of starvation.
A Boston newspaper reported: “Famine is now come to Madeira. Neither wheat, milho (Indian corn), rice, oats, barley, nor any other grain to be had. There is no bread in the vendas (shops), except for regular customers.
“Money is of no use to the poor—it will buy nothing. In the north they are giving wine to infants, having literally nothing else.
“The misery of the poor may be imagined. The Zargo is expected with rice from Lisbon, in a day or two, which will be a week’s consumption. The suffering will be fearful.”(4)
Madeira’s civil governor, Jose Silvestre Ribeiro, issued a letter to the merchants of Madeira on Aug. 24, 1852, requesting assistance from charitable people abroad. The following November, with the increased hardships of winter coming on, the governor named a committee to manage the money and goods that would be donated to Madeira relief. Several wealthy merchants in the United States—some of whom were engaged in trading for Madeira wine, as well as sugar, molasses, and other agricultural products—took the governor’s edict as a mandate to initiate a fund-raising campaign. In Philadelphia, the merchants spearheading the effort included Robert Adams & Co., S. Morris Waln & Co., and F.J. Figuera, Stover & Longstreth.
The first vessel to carry supplies to Madeira was the bark Nautilus, which left Boston on Feb. 3, 1853. The Nautilus carried 367 bushels of beans, two barrels of bread, 1188 bushels of corn, 192 barrels of corn meal, 333 barrels of flour, 412 barrels of potatoes, 546 bushels of the same, and 16,906 lbs. of rice. In return, Madeirans sent a special gift of appreciation back to Boston; they filled the Nautilus to the top with barrels of fine wine.
The campaign had gained steam a week earlier in a meeting at the Astor House in New York City. The meeting of top business leaders, called by the ad hoc Committee of Madeira, and took place on Jan. 24, 1853. Within weeks of the meeting, New York City alone collected $9725. Of that sum, $7495 was to be expended on chartering and supplying the brig Tally-ho, which was to depart New York for Madeira on Feb. 11, carrying corn, flour, and other foodstuffs.
Another $1699 was to be sent to Philadelphia to be added to the contributions of local people to purchase cargo for the Aaron J. Harvey. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on Feb. 15, 1853, that “the barque Aaron J. Harvey is loading at Lombard Street wharf” with supplies for Madeira.
The Harvey had been built in Salem, N.J. just 3 ½ years earlier; she was 243 tons, 104 feet long, and had a single deck and three masts. The stern was decorated with a gilt eagle and scroll head. The bark was owned by William Cummings & Son, a shipping company that specialized in trade with East Africa, but also had commercial connections with the West Indies, California, and China.
Cummings & Son hired James Barnes as master of the AJ Harvey. Barnes had been a mate on the Harvey a year earlier, under Capt. Perry C. Cope, on a voyage to Rio de Janeiro. But in 1853, Cummings chose Cope to command their recently launched 567-ton clipper ship Frigate Bird on her maiden voyage to Australia. And so, the younger man, James Barnes, was hired to conduct the much smaller Aaron J. Harvey on the voyage to Madeira.
On Feb. 23, the Harvey proceeded down the Delaware, bound for Madeira and the coast of Africa. She carried 1730 bushels of corn, 220 barrels of Navy bread, 100 barrels of Middling flour, 25 barrels of corn meal, five barrels of pork, two barrels of extra-fine flour, one barrel of rice, and one barrel of fish.
The Inquirer reported (April 30, 1853) that the AJ Harvey had arrived at Madeira on March 28, “thus accomplishing her charitable mission. All honor to the noble hearts in our midst who sped out with food for the famished people of that lovely isle.”
Having made her delivery, to great acclaim, Barnes and the Harvey went on to Sierra Leone, arriving there on May 12. The major export from Sierra Leone during this period was timber. In earlier days, it had been enslaved people. But the British Parliament outlawed the trans-Atlantic slave trade in 1807, and in 1833 abolished the practice of slavery in most parts of the British Empire (reimbursing major slave owners for their losses). Nevertheless, slavery and the slave trade continued in the interior of the African continent, and outlaws occasionally sought to evade the British authorities by transporting slaves across the Atlantic.
In fact, the British used the prohibition of the slave trade to their commercial advantage. When British warships interdicted slave vessels, they frequently transported the captives to Freetown, their trading station on the coast of Sierra Leone. Since the freed slaves often lacked the resources to continue their journey to their former homes in the African interior, they would remain in Freetown, where they provided a source of low-paid wage labor for the British colony. Largely by this means, the population of Freetown rose from a couple of thousand at the beginning of the century to 40,000 in 1840.
In the meantime, the timber trade led to wide deforestation in Sierra Leone. This led to the proliferation of the tsetse fly, which does not breed in forested areas. By the 1850s, diseases carried by the tsetse fly had spread widely among humans and domesticated animals.
The sugar trade: “White gold”
Barnes and the AJ Harvey left Sierra Leone on June 15 and proceeded to Marseilles, France. After returning to Philadelphia, Barnes and the AJ Harvey were soon off again, sailing for Demerara in November 1853, and returning home on Dec. 20. Demerara was a trading post in British Guiana (now Guyana), on the northeast coast of South America. It was founded as a Dutch colony, based on sugar plantations worked by slaves imported from Africa, but was ceded to the British in 1814 and combined with other British territory to form British Guiana. While in Demerara, two men deserted from the AJ Harvey. One was the steward, a light-skinned Black man named Isaac Bevan, 19 years old. The other was a seaman named George Williams (in the 1850s, a George Williams, mariner, lived on Parham Street, a small alley on the waterfront in Philadelphia’s Southwark district; that might be him).
After returning to Philadelphia, Barnes and the AJ Harvey engaged primarily in voyages to the West Indies and Cuba, occasionally voyaging to Brazil or East Africa. In most cases, and for the next 20 years, Barnes’s major cargo consisted of sugar and molasses. If tea was known as “green gold,” sugar was certainly “white gold,” grown though the labor of slaves or poverty-stricken peasants, and yielding stupendous profits for the merchants and manufacturers of Europe and the United States. For centuries, King Sugar had spread across the Americas, from Brazil to the West Indies, to the Mississippi Valley. Throughout the region, thick old-growth forests were cut down, and both soil and people were impoverished, as fields of sugarcane came to cover the land.
“You believe perhaps, gentlemen,” Karl Marx wrote in “The Poverty of Philosophy” (1848), “that the production of coffee and sugar is the natural destiny of the West Indies. Two centuries ago, nature, which does not trouble herself about commerce, had planted neither sugarcane nor coffee trees there.”(5)
Lists of ship crews compiled by the customhouse at Philadelphia show that a number of seamen, white and Black, signed up to work under Barnes for multiple voyages. This might be an indication that his men generally considered Barnes to be a good mariner and leader. Nevertheless, on a voyage to Trinidad in the summer of 1855, Capt. Barnes was assaulted by two of his seamen, Daniel E. Bromley, 23, and 15-year-old Henry Westland. The circumstances of the attack are not clear. The fact that one was just a boy seems to indicate that no organized mutiny took place; perhaps the two had been drinking, or had been discovered by the captain in an act of thievery. The two were jailed in Trinidad, and the AJ Harvey returned to Philadelphia on Oct. 1.
Barnes’ final voyage on the AJ Harvey took him to Londonderry, Ireland, in January 1857. Once they had arrived in Ireland, three young seamen, at least two of whom were in their teens, deserted and had to be replaced. In June of that year, Barnes was commanding the brig Calvert to Sierra Leone—a voyage in which one of his seamen died in Africa. A year later, he was master of the schooner JH Ashmead in a voyage to Honduras, and later to the West Indies. In 1859 and for the next five years, he was captain of the ketch Commerce.
For the next 20 years, Barnes went to sea about three times a year; in fact, he was usually at sea for longer periods than he was at home in Philadelphia. In 1856, another son—named James, like his father and grandfather—was added to the Barnes family. It seems obvious that Capt. Barnes tried to be close to his family despite his long absences at sea. In 1859, he brought his son Daniel, then seven years old, into his crew as an “apprentice.” The voyage, on the ketch Commerce to Rio de Janeiro, lasted almost four months.
Around that time, the Barnes family moved to 209 Carpenter Street, the house of Mary’s widowed mother, Sarah Frishmuth. In the 1860 census, Sarah is listed as being 48 years old. Also in the household were her unmarried children, John D., 23, a printer; and her daughter Emma, 24, a dressmaker. The Barnes family consisted of Capt. James and Mary, and their sons Daniel, age 9, and James, age 5. Mary’s grandmother, Ann W. McClain, 83, continued to reside with the family.
In the same census, Capt. James’s father, James, 79, was listed as still working as a coach trimmer and living in a household with his wife, Mary Jane, and her mother, Mary Abbot, 66, who was employed as a governess.
Wrecked in Delaware Bay
Capt. James Barnes registered for the Civil War draft in 1863, when he was 43. But it does not appear that he was ever enrolled in the Army or Navy. He continued his frequent commercial voyages to the West Indies, carrying sugar to Philadelphia and New York City on behalf of the importer John Mason & Co. Beginning in about 1864, he served as captain of the John Chrystal, a brig that had been built in 1839. There are no reports that I’ve come across that the John Chrystal met any military activity on her voyages up and down the coast. However, she did encounter several terrible storms.
In March, the John Chrystal, carrying sugar and molasses from Matanzas, Cuba, was battered by storms all the way from Cape Hatteras, N.C. to the capes of the Delaware. Just inside the bay, and not far from home, she was driven ashore by the wind and high waters.
The Daily Age of Philadelphia (April 1, 1864) reported that two days earlier, the John Chrystal had been grounded “on the beach opposite Pilot Town. She lies in good position to be got off, if assistance is given promptly. The wind blew a gale last night [March 30], increasing to a hurricane this morning, accompanied by rain. The vessels on the beach are faring badly. The poop deck and forecastle of the ship Sea Crest are barely visible above the water, and it is feared she will go to pieces if the gale continues. There are about 90 vessels behind the breakwater.”
The Philadelphia Press from the next day (April 2, 1864) had a more pessimistic account: “LEWES, Del., March 30 — Brig John Chrystal, before reported ashore, remains with six feet water in her hold; the sugar, which is in between decks, will probably be saved. The molasses will be lost, as well as the vessel …”
A news dispatch from over a week later gave an update: “The wreckers have commenced getting the cargo of the John Chrystal, wrecked at Lewes, Del., into lighters, and it will be shipped to Philadelphia” (reprinted in the Portland Daily Press, April 14, 1864). And The Philadelphia Inquirer further reported on April 18: “The schooner Joseph Turner left yesterday for Philadelphia, with sugar and molasses from the stranded brig John Chrystal.”
After some weeks, the John Chrystal herself was finally freed from the beach, and on May 2, 1864, she was towed to Philadelphia. After repairs, Capt. Barnes and the JC set sail on another sugar run to Sagua la Grande, Cuba.
Another grounding took place in early February 1871. Barnes and the John Chrystal were off the coast of North Carolina when they hit a sand bar. The brig was heading home from Pernambuco, in northeast Brazil. The Newbury Port Daily Herald (Feb. 7, 1871) reported: “Brig John Chrystal, Barnes, 40 days from Pernambuco for Philadelphia, with a cargo of sugar, went ashore 2nd inst. [Feb. 2] on New Inlet Bar, but was hauled off and towed to Wilmington, N.C., 3rd inst. by revenue cutter William II Steward. The cargo will have to be discharged and the vessel repaired.”
After repairs in Wilmington, the John Chrystal arrived in Philadelphia on Feb. 19. She did not sail again until May 11, 1871, when Capt. Barnes took her to St. John’s, Puerto Rico. That was to be his last voyage. For some reason, he was replaced as captain while in Puerto Rico, and a new captain, a man named Hess, commanded the brig on the return voyage to Philadelphia.
James Barnes returned to Philadelphia as a passenger, but never again was master of a vessel. At the time, his family still lived with Mary’s mother and grandmother. Her grandmother, who had turned 90 years old, according to the census of 1870, died soon afterwards — perhaps around the time that James returned home. The address of the family home was listed as 203 Carpenter Street, which is possibly a re-numbering of the same building that they had occupied when they were listed at 209 Carpenter.
In city directories, James Barnes is listed at various occupations during subsequent years, such as a “clerk.” In 1888, he was said to be serving as a watchman. In March of that year, he died; he was 68. After a memorial service at the home on Carpenter Street, his body was conducted to the nearby burial grounds of Gloria Dei (Old Swedes’) Church. Later, Mary Ann was buried in the same plot. A large stone, with the depiction of an anchor, was erected for both spouses above the graves.
NOTES
(1) James Barnes Sr. and his first wife, Elizabeth, share a grave plot at the Gloria Dei churchyard in Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Inquirer (Nov. 3, 1866) wrote: “BARNS — On the 1st inst., Mr. JAMES BARNS, Sr. in the 85th year of his age. The friends and relatives of the family are particularly invited to attend his funeral, from his late residence, No. 308 N. Seventh street, on Sunday afternoon, at 4 o’clock. To proceed to Sweden Church burying ground.” The death certificate states that he died of a “hemorrhage from stomach.”
(2) The first voyage from Philadelphia to China took place in 1785. The vessel was the Canton, captained by Thomas Truxton, a privateer during the Revolution, commander of the U.S. frigate Constellation, and one of the chief founders of the U.S. Navy. Truxton’s house on Second Street (corner of Delancey) still stands, though rarely recognized, and it is one of the sites seen on the walking tours of the area that are given by this writer.
(3) Another Capt. James Barnes lived in Philadelphia in the early 19th century. He married Sarah Robeson on July 24, 1798. Sarah died Sept. 25, 1852 (see Philadelphia Public Ledger, March 1, 1852); James had already passed away by that time.
(4) The quotation, without a source, appears at: https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/in-1853-boston-sends-food-to-famine-wracked-madeira-and-the-island-says-thanks/).
(5) Karl Marx is cited by Eduardo Galeano, in his discussion of the despoliation of the region by colonial and imperialist interests in “Open Veins of Latin America” (Monthly Review Press, 1973, 1997), p. 65.
philahistory.org 