India trade—the Helvetia, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Voltaire. These vessels, long the pride of Philadelphia, greatly enriched their owner.
The sloop Enterprise, of eighty tons, built at Albany and commanded by Captain Stewart Dean, was sent from New York to China in 1785. This was the first vessel to make the direct voyage from the United States to Canton. She returned during the following year with her crew of seven men and two boys all in excellent condition. When she warped alongside the wharf at New York, Captain Dean and his crew were in full uniform, and the scene, which was witnessed by an admiring throng, was enlivened by "martial music and the boatswain's whistle."
Thomas Cheesman was one of the first ship-builders in New York, and he was succeeded in business, before the end of the eighteenth century, by his son Forman, born in 1763. The latter built the forty-four-gun frigate President, launched in the year 1800 at Corlear's Hook—by far the largest vessel built in New York up to that time. Previous to this, however, he had built the Briganza and the Draper, each of three hundred tons, and the Ontario, of five hundred tons. Thomas Vail, William Vincent, and Samuel Ackley also built several vessels prior to the year 1800. The ships Eugene, Severn, Manhattan, Sampson, Echo, Hercules, Resource, York, and Oliver Ellsworth were launched from their yards. In 1804 the Oliver Ellsworth, built by Vail & Vincent and commanded by Captain Bennett, made the passage from New York to Liverpool in fourteen days, notwithstanding that
