Robert Bennet Forbes (September 18, 1804 – November 23, 1889), was an American sea captain, China merchant and ship owner.

[2]: 145 [1] On October 19, 1817, at age 13, he joined the crew on his uncle Thomas' Canton Packet and made his first voyage to China, the first of the three brothers to do so.

In 1828, he sailed Danube for Sturgis & Perkins on a trading voyage to Smyrna, Ottoman Empire and other European ports.

His work in supervising the repacking of the opium and negotiating trades with drug smugglers made him his first fortune.

"During the Civil War he was employed as a volunteer by the government to inspect the building of nine gunboats and at the same time built for himself and others the Meteor, of 1500 tons.

The Mermaid ... has tested it in a voyage around the world, and like other vessels with it, has sailed with less men, than if she had been rigged in the usual style.

[8][9][10][self-published source] He built a Greek Revival mansion for his mother in Milton, Massachusetts, designed by Isaiah Rogers (1833), that is now the Captain Robert Bennet Forbes House Museum.

The Cunard steamship Europa, on which Forbes was a passenger, ran down and sank an emigrant ship, Charles Bartlett.

He wrote that he had "no moral feeling of indignation connected with the business" despite his awareness of the human costs and the Chinese government's aims to make opium illegal, turning Forbes and his fellows into smugglers.