William F. Sturgis was born in Barnstable, Massachusetts, to Hannah Mills and William E. Sturgis, a ship master and lineal descendant from Edward Sturgis of Yarmouth, Massachusetts, the first Sturgis in America (arrived 1630).

He had joined the counting house of his uncle Russell Sturgis (1750–1826) in 1796, and less than two years later had become connected with James and Thomas Handasyd Perkins's maritime fur trade between the Pacific Northwest coast and China.

Upon his father's death in 1797, he had gone to sea to support the family as assistant trader on the Eliza, then as chief mate of the Ulysses.

He had then served under Captain Charles Derby on the Caroline until Derby died and Sturgis took command.

The Caroline sails in 1804 from the Columbia River to Kaigahnee, just south of Prince of Wales Island, Alaska, the homeland of the Kaigani Haida people, from whom he acquires some twenty-five hundred sea otter skins that net seventy-three thousand and thirty-four dollars.