A Scotsman, "the devil Struan" is portrayed as a tough and resourceful rogue, endowed with vision and determination.
In 1805, at the age of seven, Dirk Struan began his nautical adventures as a powder monkey on a King's ship at the Battle of Trafalgar, and becomes bound to the sea for life.
Struan was 12 years old (1809) when he found service on the East India Company merchant ship Vagrant Star to China.
Under the command of Tyler Brock, third mate and future nemesis, Dirk Struan was whipped mercilessly.
In 1811 a fateful night in the Malacca Strait, Vagrant Star ran aground on a reef and sank.
In 1834, free trade reform advocates succeeded in ending the monopoly of the British East India Company under the Charter Act 1833.
Additionally, Struan & Company possessed hundreds of small ships and lorchas for upriver coastal smuggling.
In exchange for a series of favours and promises, Dirk Struan received a loan of "40 Lac" (approximately £1,000,000) in silver bullion from Jin Qua.
The second part of the arrangement, Struan agreed that a member of the Chen family would forever be comprador of the Noble House.
The third part of the arrangement, Struan agreed to sell Jin Qua a sizable plot of land in Hong Kong with the deed to be recorded in the name of Gordon Chen.
As part of his efforts to protect his father, Gordon Chen arranged the assassination of Gorth Brock and sought a cure for May-may's malaria.
The first half-coin of Jin Qua was presented to Dirk Struan by the pirate warlord Wu Fang Choi.
Dirk Struan and Tyler Brock left many children, legitimate and illegitimate, who take up their respective fathers' mantles and continue the battle.
The romance between Dirk and his Chinese mistress, May-may, developed within the conventions of the genre as a basis for the novel's optimistic theme of cross-cultural fusion.
[4] Patrick McGoohan was announced to play Dirk Struan in a film version of Tai Pan in 1968 but this was never made due to budget issues.
[5][6] In the late 1970s Steve McQueen signed to play the role for a reported $10 million fee in an adaptation written by George MacDonald Fraser (who thought Sean Connery would have made ideal casting); however he later dropped out of the project; Roger Moore became briefly attached, but the movie was never made.
[7] Eventually Australian actor Bryan Brown played Struan in the movie Tai Pan (1986), which was a box office flop.