The leadership of the Jardine-Matheson firm together with Lancelot Dent and several other influential British merchants in Guangzhou decided in early 1832 to jointly fund the exploratory voyage of a ship called the "Lord Amherst." They discovered that the northern Fujianese port of Fuzhou — originally targeted as a tea market closer to the area of cultivation than Guangzhou — was well-defended and difficult to navigate. In contrast, the Zhangzhou-Quanzhou littoral in southern Fujian was full of eager traders located in conveniently secluded bays. And while trade in the provincial capital of Fuzhou was closely regulated and largely limited to tea, governance in southern Fujian was inherently more loose, and the local brokerage firms were wealthy and diversified.

The 1832 "Lord Amherst" expedition laid the groundwork for the next decade of opium trading in Fujian. The ship’s officers were charged with establishing connections with local brokers and with finding government officials who might be willing to do business. Thomas Rees, older brother of Jardine-Matheson’s John Rees, was in charge of the sailing and mapping. His maps become a central tool for opium traders and the British navy in the years to come, and Rees himself remained on the coast aboard the Amherst (and other ships) as captain until the end of the decade, selling tens of thousands of chests of opium for Dent & Company in Quanzhou, Shenhu Bay, and other Fujianese ports. Hugh Hamilton Lindsay was the leader of the expedition, and the head translator was the enigmatic Prussian missionary and doctor, Charles Gützlaff. Lindsay in the event that he was unable to bribe or otherwise come to terms with local Chinese officials along the way, was to deny any connection to the British East India Company, and instead offer a cover story of being blown off course by winds en route to Japan. Lindsay wrote that this alibi, “though true in some respects, yet certainly gives no clue for the Chinese to trace the ship.” They anchored in both Xiamen and Fuzhou before heading up to Zhejiang and the Yangzi Delta, repeatedly using the alibi in stand-offs with local officials along the way.