In 1844 Peirce took a tour of Europe, but continued to invest in shipping ventures. One of his ships was chartered in 1847 to send provisions to Monterey, California for the U.S. forces there. At the start of the California Gold Rush, he sailed on the ship "Montreal" on January 19, 1849. When they arrived in San Francisco in July 1849, the entire crew left to join the gold rush. By September he had gathered another crew and sent the "Montreal" back to New England, while he went to Honolulu. He invested in a small sugarcane plantation at Līhuʻe on Kauai island with Charles Reed Bishop and William Little Lee, but it failed due to uneven rainfall. After William Harrison Rice constructed an irrigation system, the plantation was reorganized in 1859.