Thomas N. Layton - Böcker

In the late summer of 1984, the author and a group of his archaeology students excavated fragments of Chinese porcelain at the site of a Pomo Indian village a hundred miles north of San Francisco. How did these ceramics, which were more than a hundred years old, find their way to this remote area? And what could one make of local legend that told of Pomo women wearing Chinese silk shawls in the 1850's? The author determined to find the answers to these questions, never dreaming that his quest would eventually involve the lives of nineteenth-century Boston merchants, Baltimore shipbuilders, Bombay opium brokers, and newly rich businessmen in gold rush San Francisco.The author soon learned that in 1850 the clipper Frolic, a sailing ship built specifically for the Asian opium trade, had wrecked on the Mendocino coast, a few miles from the Pomo village. He unearthed the business records of its owners, A. Heard & Co., which showed that respectable Bostonians had made their fortunes running opium from India to China. The family histories of the firm's two most influential partners are traced from the American Revolution to their joint decision to order a custom-built Baltimore clipper for the opium trade. In describing the design, construction, and outfitting of the Frolic, the author was aided by a stroke of luck—a slave named Fred Bailey, later known to the world as the abolitionist Frederick Douglass, worked in the Frolic's shipyard in 1836 and wrote detailed descriptions of the building of such ships.The Frolic, under Captain Edward Faucon (who was depicted as the "good" captain in Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast) plied the opium trade from Bombay to China from 1845 to 1850. The author describes the political, financial, and logistical aspects of the profitable enterprise before 1849, when the introduction of steam vessels into the opium trade made the Frolic obsolete as an opium clipper. However, the California gold rush created a lucrative market for Chinese goods, and the Heard firm dispatched the Frolic to San Francisco with a diverse cargo that included silks, porcelain, jewelry, and furniture. When the Frolic wrecked on the Mendocino coast, the Pomo Indians salvaged its cargo, and the vessel's history passed into folk tradition.The subsequent lives of those intimately associated with the Frolic are profiled. The owners' families preferred to forget the source of their fortunes, and prior to her death in 1942, the daughter of the Frolic's captain burned her father's papers to preserve his reputation. She could not know that in 1965 sports divers would discover the remains of her father's opium clipper, and that 134 years after its wreck, the Frolic's story would inspire an archaeologist-anthropologist to pursue its colorful history.

In a prior volume—The Voyage of the "Frolic": New England Merchants and the Opium Trade (Stanford, 1997)—historical archaeologist Thomas N. Laytontold the story of his excavation of an ancient Pomo Indian village site in Northern California, where, to his surprise, he recovered Chinese porcelain potsherds. Tracing those sherds to a beach on the rugged Mendocino coast, he then followed them out to the submerged remains of the Frolic, a sailing vessel wrecked in the summer of 1850 with a rich cargo of Chinese goods bound for Gold Rush San Francisco.In that volume, Layton used the vessel's earlier role, transporting opium from Bombay to Canton, as a vehicle to tell the story of American participation in the opium trade. Although the Frolic's career as an opium clipper was ended in 1849 by the introduction of steam vessels, the almost simultaneous discovery of gold in California suddenly created enough purchasing power to support direct commerce with China—and thus a new career for the Frolic.In this sequel volume, Layton has two objectives. First, he employs the Frolic's ill-fated first, and final, cargo to San Francisco to tell the broader story of the beginnings of direct commerce between China and California. Second, he attempts to explore the potential of contextual archaeology—the intellectual process of "transporting" artifacts from their resting places back to the behavioral contexts in which they once functioned. Layton accomplishes his objectives by describing the full trajectory of the Frolic's final cargo from four different perspectives: from that of John Hurd Everett, the California merchant who assembled the cargo in China; then from the perspectives of the sailors and Pomo Indians who pillaged the cargo immediately after the wreck; then through the eyes of twentieth-century sport divers who plundered it yet again; then, finally, through Layton's scientific perspective as an archaeologist. To augment his quest for context, he employs carefully documented vignettes to fill the interstices between the facts. Throughout, he discusses his research—replete with visits to archives and antique shops—and in so doing introduces readers to the practice of modern historical archaeology.

In a prior volume—The Voyage of the "Frolic": New England Merchants and the Opium Trade (Stanford, 1997)—historical archaeologist Thomas N. Laytontold the story of his excavation of an ancient Pomo Indian village site in Northern California, where, to his surprise, he recovered Chinese porcelain potsherds. Tracing those sherds to a beach on the rugged Mendocino coast, he then followed them out to the submerged remains of the Frolic, a sailing vessel wrecked in the summer of 1850 with a rich cargo of Chinese goods bound for Gold Rush San Francisco.In that volume, Layton used the vessel's earlier role, transporting opium from Bombay to Canton, as a vehicle to tell the story of American participation in the opium trade. Although the Frolic's career as an opium clipper was ended in 1849 by the introduction of steam vessels, the almost simultaneous discovery of gold in California suddenly created enough purchasing power to support direct commerce with China—and thus a new career for the Frolic.In this sequel volume, Layton has two objectives. First, he employs the Frolic's ill-fated first, and final, cargo to San Francisco to tell the broader story of the beginnings of direct commerce between China and California. Second, he attempts to explore the potential of contextual archaeology—the intellectual process of "transporting" artifacts from their resting places back to the behavioral contexts in which they once functioned. Layton accomplishes his objectives by describing the full trajectory of the Frolic's final cargo from four different perspectives: from that of John Hurd Everett, the California merchant who assembled the cargo in China; then from the perspectives of the sailors and Pomo Indians who pillaged the cargo immediately after the wreck; then through the eyes of twentieth-century sport divers who plundered it yet again; then, finally, through Layton's scientific perspective as an archaeologist. To augment his quest for context, he employs carefully documented vignettes to fill the interstices between the facts. Throughout, he discusses his research—replete with visits to archives and antique shops—and in so doing introduces readers to the practice of modern historical archaeology.