Object Status:
Unlocated
Accession Date:
June 6, 1808
Primary Source Reference:
Peale Museum Accessions Book, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, p. 31
Additional Source Text:
Poulson's American Daily Advertiser (Philadelphia), 22 July 1808 reads: "A piece of Bark Clothing, with their threads made of grass."
Notes:
Fanning & Coles was an American firm engaged in the Old China Trade and related Maritime fur trade. The two principal partners were sea captain Edmund Fanning (1769-1841) and financier Willet Coles. The firm existed from 1798 to 1815. On several voyages they discovered new uncharted islands such as Fanning Island and Palmyra Atoll. Coles and Fanning secured permission from President James Madison for an expedition to the Fiji Islands to buy rare woods for trade with China.
"Early in 1807, this firm laid the keel of a three-hundred-ton vessel, Tonquin. In the unprecedented time of one year and five days the vessel was built, coppered, rigged, launched and, by Captain Edmund [Fanning], sailed to China and back." Walter Teller, ed., Five Sea Captains (New York, 1960), p. 107
