John Greene Proud, supercargo for several ships owned by the large New York firm Minturn and Champlin, wrote from French-occupied Hamburg to his principals in June 1810: “The resources of this market in Capital and a Spirit of Speculation so far exceed that of any other in this quarter that is open to us.” A week later, however, writing to London bankers, Proud sounded a note of caution: “Our mutual N.Y. friends have had some pretty considerable and on the whole advantageous business in this quarter under my direction — but the Prospect is now exceedingly cloudy and if we are enabled to wind up present Affairs in safety and without Loss it is as much as can be expected.” By October he characterizes the Hamburg, and by implication North Sea/Baltic, market as “nearly as bad as it can be,” in November, his opinion drops lower still: “With respect to commerce I hope it is not entirely annhilated but you may consider it as dead for the present.”

Having been detained by Danish privateers, nearly shipwrecked off Rostock, and frustrated at every turn by French douanières and duplicitous German merchants, supercargo Leonard Matthews of the schooner Nonsuch was even more scathing about American trade prospects in northern Europe at that same time. From Hamburg, he informed his principal, merchant and later mayor of Baltimore George Stiles, in February 1811 that: “The shape given to commerce in this country, and which involves your interest so deeply, is to me a source of infinite regret, but no human foresight could guard against it.” He was long since disenchanted with north European markets: “I am heartily sick of Europe, and wish very much to go home, but when that happy period will arrive is very uncertain.” Writing to a fellow American supercargo, Matthews expressed his disgust, asserting that the German merchants would “fleece you like the devil, for it is, unfortunately for us, the prevailing opinion of the merchants in this country, that the United States will have no more trade to these parts of the world…”

Although perhaps more severe as a result of the Napoleonic conflict, the experiences of Proud and Matthews were by no means uncommon for maritime merchants from the fledgeling US.