The William and Favorite: The Post-Revolutionary Voyages of Two Philadelphia Ships
AFTER the Revolution, American merchants worked to replace / \ hazardous wartime ventures with more stable and profitable JL JL, trades. Parliament allowed United States vessels the same privileges as English vessels when trading in Great Britain, but it prohibited their entry into colonial ports, as did several other nations. Thus, American merchants accustomed to purchasing British goods with profits from West Indian markets before the war now faced new obstacles to their former trades. One Philadelphia mercantile house, Stewart, Nesbitt & Co., used two of their ships acquired in wartime to experiment with promising peacetime opportunities. A brief examination of their experiences offers a good sampling of the ways Americans tried to adapt to the changing commercial patterns and trade restrictions of the post-Revolutionary decade. Stewart, Nesbitt & Co. was organized in 1782 by two Philadelphians of Irish birth. Walter Stewart was a young handsome army colonel who had just married the daughter of the city's leading investor in privateers, Blair McClenachan. Stewart's energy and new financial resources helped him convince his close friend, Alexander Nesbitt, to accept him as a business partner. Nesbitt, who had established himself before the war, invested mostly in letters of marque bound for West Indian and French ports, but he was also