Pierre Trottier Desauniers was from a well-established business family. On 27 Dec. Desauniers devoted most of his energies to maritime trade and the fitting-out of ships. Desauniers acted as his supplier and attended to the marketing of the products of the Labrador fishery. The business required a large outlay of funds; in the two men formed a partnership, for which Desauniers put up , livres.
As ships were needed to ply between Labrador and Quebec and to promote export trade, Desauniers wanted to launch into shipbuilding in But faced with the difficulty of finding the necessary wood, he could not execute his plan immediately. In he began building ships, encountering stiff competition, however, from the royal shipyard for wood and labour.
A few others were free to work for the private shipbuilders, but the intendant required in return that the shipowners train carpenters. In addition to shipbuilding, Desauniers seems to have been interested for a time in the manufacture of fish glue. In October Desauniers was chosen as syndic of the merchants of Quebec, an office he held until This nomination shows clearly the importance of his business concerns and bears witness to the confidence his colleagues had in him.
Representing the commercial interests of Quebec, in Desauniers sent a report to the minister of Marine, Maurepas, asking for card money to be issued instead of bills of exchange, to facilitate retail trade. He also requested contracts for building ships for the king or subsidies for private shipbuilding. In Desauniers, with Louis Charly Saint-Ange, the syndic for Montreal, signed another complaint to the minister of Marine over the difficulties of sea-borne trade in wartime.
The syndics asked for escorts between French ports and Quebec, to avoid additional losses of ships. He had four domestic servants to attend his family. On his ships Desauniers brought alcohol and general merchandise from France, and he sold the products of the Labrador fishery to the West Indies, from which he brought back tobacco. But the War of the Austrian Succession was to transform this promising career as a colonial merchant.
