William Graves letter book

Letter book includes Graves' business correspondence from July 21, 1846 to May 22, 1860. The volume begins with letters by Captain Graves related to the 1846-1847 voyage of the ship Thomas Perkins from New York to Penang, Malaysia, Singapore, Amoy, China, Canton, China, and Manila, Philippines. Graves' letters regarding this voyage date from July 21, 1846 to July 17, 1849, and were addressed to his Newburyport partners David Pingree, William Stone, and George West; Peele, Hubbell & Co., in Manila; and to C.C. Currier, in Penang. Graves procured and sold shipments of rice, cotton, tea, Sapan wood, plantain bark, sugar, hemp, and indigo, throughout the voyage; he also transported passengers on occasion. Interspersed amongst the letters are invoices, charter agreements with Chinese and European merchants and disbursement accounts. The volume continues with an April 3, 1850 agreement appointing Graves as the local agent for the New Bedford Cordage Company to sell cordage in Newburyport. The bulk of the correspondence from April 26, 1850 to February 3, 1852, is addressed to William J. Rotch, the company's president, regarding cordage orders, but includes information on the ships for which rigging was purchased, particularly bark Lewis, ships Castilian and Anna Maria. The remaining letters and the majority of the volume deal primarily with Graves' instructions to ship captains with business conditions. The bulk of the correspondence from November 14, 1855 to May 26, 1860, is addressed to the ships' captains, Robert Couch of the George West and Jeremiah Lunt and later Edward Graves, William's brother, for the Josiah L. Hale. Graves appears to have regularly shipped cotton from New Orleans, Louisiana, to Liverpool, England. According to Graves business was "exceedingly dull" during this period. His letters are full of instructions and advice on procuring favorable shipments or charters primarily of guano from Liverpool onward to other destinations such as India, China, Australia or the Pacific Coast, but the letters only indicate that Captain Edward Graves managed to obtain at least one shipment that sent him forward to China in 1859. Scattered throughout the remainder of the volume is additional correspondence regarding obtaining charters with merchants, including an inquiry to Augustine Heard & Co. in Hong Kong on May 31, 1859, and to Alsop & Co in Lima, Peru, in August and September 1859, and insurance for the ships and cargo from Baring Brothers & Co. amongst others. There are an additional three loose letters laid in throughout the volume.