"Passed a ship under double reefs, we with our royals and studdingsails set....Passed a ship laying-to under a close-reefed maintopsail....Split all three topsails and had to heave to....Seven vessels in sight and we outsail all of them....Under double-reefed topsails passed several vessels hove-to." Much the same record might be read in the log of the medium clipper Florence--and it is the same story of carrying sail superbly on a ship which had been built to stand up under it: "Passed two barks under reefed courses and close-reefed topsails standing the same way, we with royals and topgallant studding-sails," or "Passed a ship under topsails, we with our royals set." For eleven weeks "the topsail halliards were started only once, to take in a single reef for a few hours." It is not surprising, therefore, to learn that, seventeen days out from Shanghai, the Florence exchanged signals with the English ship John Hagerman, which had sailed thirteen days before her.
Two notable events in the history of the nineteenth century occurred within the same year, 1849, to open new fields of trade to the Yankee clipper.One of these was the repeal of the British Navigation Laws which had given English ships a monopoly of the trade between London and the British East Indies, and the other was the discovery of gold in California.After centuries of pomp and power, the great East India Company had been deprived of its last exclusive rights afloat in 1833.Its ponderous, frigate-built merchantmen ceased to dominate the British commerce with China and India and were sold or broken up.All British ships were now free to engage in this trade, but the spirit and customs of the old regime still strongly survived.Flying the house-flags of private owners, the East Indiamen and China tea ships were still built and manned like frigates, slow, comfortable, snugging down for the night under reduced sail.
There was no competition to arouse them until the last barrier of the Navigation Laws was let down and they had to meet the Yankee clipper with the tea trade as the huge stake.
Then at last it was farewell to the gallant old Indianian and her ornate, dignified prestige.With a sigh the London Times confessed: "We must run a race with our gigantic and unshackled rival.We must set our long-practised skill, our steady industry, and our dogged determination against his youth, ingenuity, and ardor.Let our shipbuilders and employers take warning in time.
There will always be an abundant supply of vessels good enough and fast enough for short voyages.But we want fast vessels for the long voyages which otherwise will fall into American hands."Before English merchants could prepare themselves for these new conditions, the American clipper Oriental was loading in 1850 at Hong Kong with tea for the London market.Because of her reputation for speed, she received freightage of six pounds sterling per ton while British ships rode at anchor with empty holds or were glad to sail at three pounds ten per ton.Captain Theodore Palmer delivered his sixteen hundred tons of tea in the West India Docks, London, after a crack passage of ninety-one days which had never been equaled.His clipper earned $48,000, or two-thirds of what it had cost to build her.Her arrival in London created a profound impression.The port had seen nothing like her for power and speed; her skysail yards soared far above the other shipping; the cut of her snowy canvas was faultless;all clumsy, needless tophamper had been done away with; and she appeared to be the last word in design and construction, as lean and fine and spirited as a race-horse in training.
This new competition dismayed British shipping until it could rally and fight with similar weapons The technical journal, Naval Science, acknowledged that the tea trade of the London markets had passed almost out of the hands of the English ship-owner, and that British vessels, well-manned and well-found, were known to lie for weeks in the harbor of Foo-chow, waiting for a cargo and seeing American clippers come in, load, and sail immediately with full cargoes at a higher freight than they could command.Even the Government viewed the loss of trade with concern and sent admiralty draftsmen to copy the lines of the Oriental and Challenge while they were in drydock.
British clippers were soon afloat, somewhat different in model from the Yankee ships, but very fast and able, and racing them in the tea trade until the Civil War.With them it was often nip and tuck, as in the contest between the English Lord of the Isles and the American clipper bark Maury in 1856.The prize was a premium of one pound per ton for the first ship to reach London with tea of the new crop.The Lord of the Isles finished loading and sailed four days ahead of the Maury, and after thirteen thousand miles of ocean they passed Gravesend within ten minutes of each other.The British skipper, having the smartest tug and getting his ship first into dock, won the honors.In a similar race between the American Sea Serpent and the English Crest of the Wave, both ships arrived off the Isle of Wight on the same day.
It was a notable fact that the Lord of the Isles was the first tea clipper built of iron at a date when the use of this stubborn material was not yet thought of by the men who constructed the splendid wooden ships of America.
