USA / China: Captain Robert Bennet Forbes (1804–1889), sea captain, China merchant, ship owner, and opium trader

Robert Bennet Ford (1804–1889) was born in Jamaica Plain, near Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Ralph Bennet Forbes and wife Margaret Perkins, of the Perkins family, and brother of John Murray Forbes. As a member of the Forbes family of Boston, much of his wealth was derived from the opium and China Trade and he played a prominent role in the outbreak of the Opium War.

On October 19, 1817, then aged thirteen years, he shipped before the mast in the Canton Packet and made his first voyage to China. About 1832 he made his last voyage to China and in 1840 became head of Russell & Company, the largest American commercial house in China. He was at one time American vice consul at Canton (now Guangzhou).

Captain Forbes owned or was involved in the construction of approximately seventy vessels. His first ship was the Lintin, a 390-ton bark built by Sprague and James in Medford, Mass., in 1830.

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