Note 41 — Chapter XVII · THE VOYAGES OF CAPTAIN RICHARD CLEVELAND (1791-1820)
Reading edition
“Several American trading craft made their appearance on the California coast this year, creating not a little excitement in some instances by attempts at smuggling in the success of which the people were hardly less interested than the Yankee captains. The Lelia Byrd was fitted out at Hamburg by Capt. Richard J. Cleveland, of Salem, Massachusetts, who had just made a fortune by a four years’ voyage or series of commercial adventures in the Pacific, during which he had touched the northern coast of America, but not of California, in partnership with William Shaler, and sailed in November, 1801.
“An amusing feature of this and other similar narratives is the cool frankness with which the Americans and English present the evasion of all Spanish commercial and revenue regulations as an action altogether praiseworthy, and the efforts of the officials to enforce those regulations as correspondingly reprehensible.” (From The History of California, by Herbert Howe Bancroft. Vol II. Page 10.)