Tea Races
After the East India Company lost its monopoly right to buy and sell tea in India in 1813, more and more private trading companies started to transport tea. In 1832, the first American clipper, inspired by the Baltimore Clipper (actually a schooner and more of a privateer), saw the light of day. In the 1840s, others followed because clippers were light, sleekly built and able to carry a lot of sail without affecting their speed. This made them ideal for fast transport. Of course, this also prompted the British to build their own clippers, and from the 1850s onwards they had their own clipper fleet. The logical next step, of course, when all these ultra-fast clipper ships were sailing the world's oceans, was to out-compete the other ships. Each crew competed with the next to be the first to return with a ship full of tea and a range of other goods, creating great excitement and often a substantial extra reward for the winning ship.
The "Thermopylae" Leaving Foochow by Montague Dawson 1895-1973 (x)
The Clipper races took place when the first teas of the season arrived from China. During the tea season they were literally the talk of the town. Telegrams were sent and read out with great excitement as the ships passed certain points once they reached the English Channel. Tea buyers and merchants often stayed overnight at the docks or in nearby lodgings when the clippers reached an area called Gravesend. This meant that the ships would soon be docking and everyone wanted to be the first to buy the new season's teas and sell on to their customers the gewinner tea. The races, which began in the 1850s, ended after 1871, reaching their peak in the 1860s.
Racing Home, the China Clippers Chrysolite and Stornoway Almost Neck, by Montague Dawson 1895-1973 (x)
This race, held in 1866, went down in history as the Great Tee Race and was initially started by 9 clippers but the following five broke away. Fiery Cross (a very successful winner in recent years), Ariel, Taeping, Serica and Taitsing. The race took over three months and went through the South China Sea, through the Sunda Strait and across the Indian Ocean, around the Cape of Good Hope and up the Atlantic Ocean to the English Channel. This was the fastest route a ship could take because the Suez Canal had not yet been completed. The three leading ships reached the port of London shortly after each other.
Illustrated London News, 22 September 1866 p276. Taeping and Ariel off The Lizard (x)
At Dungeness, harbour pilots boarded the Taeping and the Ariel at the same time and at the Downs, steamers were waiting to tow the ships up the Thames. At this point the race was truly decided.
Both ships were taken in tow at the same time and went head to head up the Thames. However, the Taeping reached Gravesend first, the Ariel was close behind and the Serica in third was not beaten. Taeping reached the harbour at 21:45 and won the race by just 20 minutes ahead of the Ariel. The Serica was third, having arrived just an hour and a half after the winner.
Tea Clipper Race, by Harry Berstecher (1893–1983) (x)
It had taken the three teaclippers only 99 days to circumnavigate three quarters of the globe. The Daily Mail reported that the Taeping secured the prize, which was an additional payment of ten shillings per tonne of tea. There were 1,108,709 pounds of tea loaded on board the Taeping. This was not a good deal for the merchants, however, because the Erl King, which sailed out of competition because it had steam propulsion as an auxiliary engine, had already arrived in London a week earlier with fresh tea. That the races stopped from 1871 was due to the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, which allowed a shorter route to and from China. This route was practically impossible for sailing ships, as they had to be towed through the canal, and so the clippers gradually became superfluous as merchant ships.