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Tea was one of the very few commodities carried at speed in the heyday of sail. Other cargoes were either too bulky or insufficiently valuable to make it worth risking a whole ship and crew in racing through the typhoons and the shoals of the South China Sea with all sails set, just to be able to dock in the Port of London a few hours or days ahead of the pack. But in the middle of the 19th century, demand for fresh tea was such that the first vessel home from Fuzhou or Shanghai could command a premium of at least 10 percent for her wares.
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A clipper ship that cost perhaps £12,000 or £15,000 to build might bring home a cargo worth almost £3,000 on her first voyage.
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Captain John Keay, master of the crack new British clipper ship Ariel, had good reason to feel pleased with himself. He had secured the first cargo of tea to come to market at the great Chinese port of Foochow (modern Fuzhou) in 1866—560 tons of first and second pickings, freighted at the high price of £7 a ton: the very finest leaves available. The cargo had been floated out to him in lighters, packed in more than 12,000 hand-made tea chests, and stowed below decks in the record time of just four days. Now Ariel was weighing anchor at 5 p.m. on the evening of May 28–the first tea clipper to sail for London that season.
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Ariel
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She was a brand new ship: “A perfect beauty,” Keay recalled, “to every nautical man who saw her; in symmetrical grace and proportion of hull, spars, sails, rigging and finish she satisfied the eye and put all in love with her without exception. Very light airs gave her headway, and I could trust her like a thing alive in all evolutions.” Ariel was indeed the fleetest vessel of her time; flying the astounding total of more than 26,000 square feet of canvas, she could reach speeds of 16 knots, far faster than contemporary steamers.
But the advantage that Keay held over the other clippers crowded in the port was minimal, and Ariel was unlucky with her tugs. The paddle steamer Island Queen, hired to take the clipper in tow, lacked the power to carry her across the bar of the Min River against a falling tide. Stranded for the night, Keay and his crack crew were forced to lie at anchor and watch as their rivals completed their own hurried loading and started in pursuit. That evening the rival Fiery Cross came down the river towed by a more powerful tug, edged her way into clear water, and set a course east across the China Sea. Keay was still negotiating the bar next morning when two other clippers, Serica and Taeping, appeared beside him. The Tea Race of 1866—the most exciting in the history of the China trade—was on.
As he watched the Fiery Cross pull away in that evening in May 1866, Keay must have realized he would have to call on all of his ship’s fine qualities to win that season’s tea race. His rival, built six years earlier, had proved herself by far the fastest and most successful clipper of the early 1860s, while his own ship was comparatively untried. Although slightly smaller than Ariel, the ship now receding into the dusk of the China Sea boasted elegant lines that made her a good sailer to windward, and her master, Robinson, had fitted her with all manner of gear, including roller-reefing equipment to improve the efficiency of the sails. More important, Robinson was a highly experienced racer who had brought Fiery Cross home to London first in the tea races of 1861, 1862, 1863 and 1865, being beaten in 1864 only by the brand-new Serica. He had been rendered so anxious by the Ariel‘s early departure he had departed the moment his cargo was complete, without his papers and without signing the official bills of lading—thus gaining 12 hours on the Taeping and the Serica and reducing the latter’s master, Captain George Innes, to an apoplectic fury.
But the advantage that Keay held over the other clippers crowded in the port was minimal, and Ariel was unlucky with her tugs. The paddle steamer Island Queen, hired to take the clipper in tow, lacked the power to carry her across the bar of the Min River against a falling tide. Stranded for the night, Keay and his crack crew were forced to lie at anchor and watch as their rivals completed their own hurried loading and started in pursuit. That evening the rival Fiery Cross came down the river towed by a more powerful tug, edged her way into clear water, and set a course east across the China Sea. Keay was still negotiating the bar next morning when two other clippers, Serica and Taeping, appeared beside him. The Tea Race of 1866—the most exciting in the history of the China trade—was on.
As he watched the Fiery Cross pull away in that evening in May 1866, Keay must have realized he would have to call on all of his ship’s fine qualities to win that season’s tea race. His rival, built six years earlier, had proved herself by far the fastest and most successful clipper of the early 1860s, while his own ship was comparatively untried. Although slightly smaller than Ariel, the ship now receding into the dusk of the China Sea boasted elegant lines that made her a good sailer to windward, and her master, Robinson, had fitted her with all manner of gear, including roller-reefing equipment to improve the efficiency of the sails. More important, Robinson was a highly experienced racer who had brought Fiery Cross home to London first in the tea races of 1861, 1862, 1863 and 1865, being beaten in 1864 only by the brand-new Serica. He had been rendered so anxious by the Ariel‘s early departure he had departed the moment his cargo was complete, without his papers and without signing the official bills of lading—thus gaining 12 hours on the Taeping and the Serica and reducing the latter’s master, Captain George Innes, to an apoplectic fury.
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The four contenders sailed east to round the northern coast of Formosa (now Taiwan), then shaped a course to the south. Occasionally they came close enough for the crew of one ship to see the men of another over the water, setting more sails or trimming their vessel to coax an extra quarter-knot from her, but mostly the rival clippers sailed independently. Fiery Cross made good use of the 14-hour lead she had gained over Ariel at the bar of the Min River, and reached Anjer, at the exit to the China Sea, only 20 days out from Fuzhou. Taeping and Ariel had fallen two days behind, and Serica did not pass the town for another day after that. But the weather in the Indian Ocean and around the Cape of Good Hope evened matters out somewhat; all four ships made fine time, Ariel logging a single day’s run of 317 miles and Fiery Cross one of 328. By the time the island of St. Helena came over the horizon, Captain Donald MacKinnon’s Taeping held a slender lead of 24 hours over Fiery Cross, with Ariel and Serica one day further behind.
MacKinnon
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Three of the four rivals were composite ships, built of wood over an iron frame, but Serica was lighter, built of wood only, and had finer lines than her half-sister Taeping. Her captain, Innes, was a notorious taskmaster with a volcanic temper, and in the lighter winds around the Equator he caught up with MacKinnon. Ariel was picking up speed too, and all four vessels passed Flores, in the Azores, together on August 29.
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The wind remained fair, blowing from the southeast, as the racers headed for the English Channel. Gradually they strung out into a line, luck or determination slightly favoring Ariel and Taeping over Fiery Cross and Serica. Still together after 97 days at sea, the two leaders ran up the Channel in sight of each other, both logging 14 knots for most of the day as they made for Deal and the Tea Race’s unofficial finish. At eight on the morning of September 6, Ariel was spotted signaling her number by watchers on the shore, and not ten minutes later Taeping hove into view to claim second place. Serica was less than two hours behind, with Fiery Cross an unlucky and (to Robinson) humiliating 36 hours further back
Even then, the racers seem to have been reluctant to abandon their chase. With Keay unable to afford the latest tug, Taeping nipped into the London docks 25 minutes ahead of Ariel. He and MacKinnon agreed to split the premium of 10 shillings per ton awarded to the first ship home each season.
The Tea Race of 1866 caused an enormous stir in the sporting and nautical circles of Britain. Ariel and Taeping had left Fuzhou together and arrived home on the other side of the globe still together, Ariel‘s winning time being seven thousandths of one percent faster than her rival’s. The Tea Race was never so close again in its 30-year history.
The Tea Race of 1866 caused an enormous stir in the sporting and nautical circles of Britain. Ariel and Taeping had left Fuzhou together and arrived home on the other side of the globe still together, Ariel‘s winning time being seven thousandths of one percent faster than her rival’s. The Tea Race was never so close again in its 30-year history.
From the Smithsonian
Leeds Mercury 13 June 1866; Glasgow Herald 7+12 September 1866; George Campbell. China Tea Clippers. London: Adlard Coles, 1974; Howard Chapelle. The Search for Speed Under Sail. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1968; Arthur H. Clark. The Clipper Ship Era. An Epitome of Famous American and British Clipper Ships, Their Owners, Builders, Commanders and Crews 1843-1869. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1911; Basil Lubbock. The China Clippers. Glasgow: James Brown, 1919.
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