Among the ships kept in port by the cold was a 360-ton schooner named the Empress of China. While her captain, John Green, waited anxiously, “the mercury dipped below zero for days on end,” according to historian Eric Jay Dolin in his book When America First Met China. “Finally,” Dolin records, “the temperature rebounded, causing the ice to retreat, and on Sunday, February 22, as the sun rose in the brilliant blue sky and gentle winds tippled the surface of water…the Empress of China cleared the wharf, and Green and his forty-two-man crew began the groundbreaking voyage, thus launching America’s trade with China.”
As Dolin implies here, the vessel’s name was no coincidence: the Empress’s destination was Guangzhou, and the Empress was the first American vessel to undertake trade with China. George Washington’s 52nd birthday was also the birth of the largest trading relationship that the world has ever known.
