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 TRADE - The Woman Who Jumped Out Of The Hat Box New England
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History and adventure are where you find them. Susan Lamm found them in the winter of 1989 in an old blue hatbox perched atop a pile of neighbor's trash. Curiosity piqued, she crossed the street and asked her neighbor's permission to have a look. What she found inside that hatbox would take her on a ten-year odyssey of discovery not only into the story of the China trade, but into the lives of an unusual couple as well.
While anchored at Whampoa in the Pearl River estuary of China, taking on a cargo of silk, tea, pearl buttons, and chinaware, Mary Ann went in search of adventure. Along with her husband, she attempted to enter the walled city of Canton, a city forbidden to foreign women. Although unsuccessful in her attempt to enter the city, she would later refer to this 16-month voyage as the "most important event" of her life. Coming from a seafaring family, Mary Ann must have been aware of the dangers and difficulties involved in foreign travel. Seasickness, contagious diseases, vermin, boredom, mutiny, pirates in the South China Sea, as well as the ever-constant possibility of shipwreck were not unusual hazards for a life at sea in the early 19th century. Notwithstanding these hazards, she would join her husband one year later in the Oneida for yet another Far Eastern voyage. Rounding the Horn once again, the vessel departed Lima, Peru for Canton, China. While en route, Mary Ann experienced what she would later describe as the only time she had been frightened during her voyages. While crossing the Pacific, in reduced visibility, a whaling ship collided with Oneida carrying away the latter's mizzen as well as a longboat. This caused them to divert to Honolulu in the Hawaiian Islands. While repairs were being carried out on the vessel, Mary Ann was able to explore the island and socialize with the wives of missionaries, merchants and whalers who had formed a community there. Her third and final voyage took place five years later in 1843 when she
circumnavigated the world with her husband for the last time. Retiring
from the sea, they settled in Fairhaven, Massachusetts where they raised
their great-nephew, having no children of their own. Lemuel concerned
himself with his investments and the shore-side business of ships until
he died in 1864. Mary Ann continued to live in Fairhaven, entertaining
her visitors with the wonders of her adventures, until her death in 1906.
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Copyright © 2001 New Trade Winds |
The
couple Susan Lamm uncovered was that of Mary Ann Hathaway Tripp of New York City
and her husband, ship's Captain Lemuel Carver Tripp of Fairhaven, Massachusetts.
Mary Ann Tripp, who lived from 1810 to 1906, had sailed around the world in a
square-rigged vessel by her 25th birthday, rounding Cape Horn and touching on
ports in South America before continuing on plying for cargo in the China trade.
In 1828, at the age of eighteen, she married Lemuel Tripp, a captain she'd met
through her uncle's shipping business in New Bedford. Barely a month into her
marriage she found herself stranded for 14 months while Lemuel sailed the west
coast of South America. When he returned to New York in March of 1830 she joined
him there briefly, but two months later he departed on yet another lengthy voyage.
Possibly because the pangs of separation were too much and the yearning for adventure
too great, she would join her husband on board and in May 1833 she sailed with
him in the Florida for Valparaiso, Chile and eventually onward to China.