High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Empress of China (AKA "Chinese Queen") was a three-masted, square-rigged sailing ship, initially built in 1783 for service as a privateer. After the Treaty of Paris brought a formal end to the American Revolutionary War, the vessel was refitted for commercial purposes . It became the first American ship to sail from the newly independent United States to China, opening what is known today as the Old China Trade and transporting the first official representative of the American government to Canton.