Well said, although I am not sure my history books included this point: (Americans in Boston made millions on this as well)
I may have to look into that.
The “Clipper Ships” of the day were hauling cargo, yes. The agent for sales/distro on board for the owners was known as a “Supercargo”. Black tar opium to San Francisco, which made it out thru the old West to/by the Chinese coolie labor on the railroads coolie gangs (and opium dens all over the West, Denver, Dodge City, San Fran, Deadwood, and thousands of areas where coolie labor interacted with the locals (money to be made), along with the silk trade. In the same way the major money of the first slave trading was made through transshipment from Africa by Boston owned ships.
Excellent book on that topic is “White Cargo”— about indentured servitude from the English Empire to the American Colonies and to sugar plantations in the West Indies (the first “workers” there were from Ireland, sentenced to “transportation”— long before the blacks, were imported and then “bred”). Includes vast amount of research on the Ogelthorpe criminal colony near Savannah (Irish, again). Not to mention the little London street urchins who were sent away to get them off the streets. (Oliver Twist, was Dickens’ commentary on those times).