Nothing but solid Anglo-Saxon persistence had enabled the company to build up the trade. Seven years after their first small adventure, or in 1780, a depot of two small receiving hulks was established in Lark's Bay, south of Macao. A year later the company freighted a ship to Canton, but finding no demand were obliged to sell the lot of 1,600 chests at a loss to Sinqua, a Canton "Hong-merchant," who, not being able to dispose of it to advantage, reshipped it. The price in that year was $550 (Mexican) a chest; Sinqua had paid the company only $200, but even at a bargain he found no market. Meantime, in the words of a "memorandum," prepared by Joshua Rowntree for the debate in parliament last year, "British merchants spread the habit up and down the coast; opium store-ships armed as fortresses were moored at the mouth of the Canton River." In 1782, the company's supercargoes at Canton wrote to Calcutta: "The importation of opium being strongly prohibited by the Chinese government, and a business altogether new to us, it was necessary for us to take our measures (for disposing of a cargo) with the utmost caution." This "business altogether new to us" was, of course, plain smuggling. From the first it had been necessary to arm the smuggling vessels; and as these grew in number the Chinese sent out an increasing number of armed revenue junks or cruisers. The traders usually found it possible to buy off the commanders of the revenue junks, but as this could not be done in every case it was inevitable that there should be encounters now and then, with occasional loss of life. These affrays soon became too frequent to be ignored.