USS Brandywine (1825) - 1843: China Operations

1843: China Operations

Brandywine went back into commission on 16 February 1843, Lieutenant Charles W. Chauncey in command, and set sail for the East Indies on 24 May. After rounding the Cape of Good Hope, she reached Bombay, India on 24 October to pick up the special envoy to China, Caleb Cushing, and took him to Macau where he went ashore and began negotiations for a treaty.

While Cushing was working to develop contacts with the Chinese government, Brandywine visited Manila, Hong Kong and Whampoa. On 16 June 1844, the high commissioner appointed by the Chinese emperor to deal with Cushing, Ch'i-ying, arrived at Macau; and negotiations opened on the 21st.

Following 12 days of discussions, the Treaty of Wang Hsia was signed on 3 July providing for the establishment of five American treaty ports in China. It also granted protection to American sailors shipwrecked on Chinese shores and guaranteed that both civil and criminal law cases involving Americans would be adjudicated in consular courts. In effect, the treaty extended to the U.S. the privileges that Great Britain had extracted from China in the Treaty of Nanking that ended the Opium War, though with one important exception. The American treaty expressly forbade the opium traffic, but the British treaty did not.

Cushing set sail in the brig Perry on 29 August to return to the U.S. with the new treaty. Brandywine, on the other hand, remained in the Orient until departing Macau for Honolulu, Hawaii on 2 December, carrying word of the Chinese privy council's approval of the treaty.

From Hawaii, she sailed to the west coast of South America where she made calls at several ports before setting out to double Cape Horn on her way home. At the end of a long and successful cruise, Brandywine stood into Norfolk, Virginia on 17 September 1845, and was decommissioned there eight days later.