On October 24, 1824, he enrolled on the crew of the merchant ship Griffon mastered by his brother Marus T. Peirce.

He was promoted to ship's clerk for the three-year trading voyage on the west coast of British Columbia.

[1] Peirce worked as a clerk for fellow ex-New Englander James Hunnewell (1794–1869), who ran a mercantile business.

In 1834 he chartered the Becket from King Kamehameha III and traveled to China trading sandalwood and merchandise to the Kamchatka Peninsula.

When they arrived in San Francisco in July 1849, the entire crew left to join the gold rush.

He invested in a small sugarcane plantation at Līhuʻe on Kauaʻi island with Charles Reed Bishop and William Little Lee, but it failed due to uneven rainfall.

Seeing the new market potential, he joined his old friends Hunnewell and Brewer in a partnership sending goods between Hawaii and California.

He helped provide transportation for troops, and was meeting at Port Royal, South Carolina, with Admiral William Reynolds whom he had known in Hawaii in 1840, when he heard Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated.

This time he traveled on the transcontinental railroad and arrived in Honolulu by June 15, 1869, twenty years after his last visit.

This was a careful compromise between those who wanted full annexation of the islands or cessation of the Harbor, and others who opposed any threats to sovereignty.

[9] Kalākaua offered Peirce the Royal Order of Kamehameha, but he had to wait until no longer employed by the U.S. Government to accept.

As he was about to leave, Kalākaua offered him the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs for the Kingdom of Hawaii on March 1.

There was a shortage of experienced politicians and diplomats willing to serve; in fact, the Minister from the Kingdom to the United States was fellow New Englander Elisha Hunt Allen.

[12] However, after a no confidence vote was narrowly defeated by the legislature, Kalākaua replaced his entire cabinet on July 3, 1878.