Cutty Sark is a British clipper ship. Built on the River Leven, Dumbarton, Scotland in 1869 for the Jock Willis Shipping Line, she was one of the last tea clippers to be built and one of the fastest, at the end of a long period of design development for this type of vessel, which ended as steamships took over their routes. She was named after the short shirt of the fictional witch in Robert Burns' poem Tam o' Shanter, first published in 1791.
Condent, born in Plymouth in Devon, was an English pirate who was best known for his piracies in the Indian Ocean.
Marco Polo was a three-masted wooden clipper ship, launched in 1851 at Saint John, New Brunswick. She was named after Venetian traveler Marco Polo. The ship carried emigrants and passengers to Australia and was the first vessel to make the round trip from Liverpool in under six months. Later in her career, the ship was used as a cargo ship before running aground off Cavendish, Prince Edward Island, in 1883.
Lightning was a clipper ship, one of the last really large clippers to be built in the United States. She was built by Donald McKay for James Baines of the Black Ball Line, Liverpool, for the Australia trade.
William Henry "Bully" Hayes was a notorious American ship's captain who engaged in blackbirding in the 1860s and 1870s.
Duke of Roxburgh was launched in 1828 at Newcastle upon Tyne. Initially she traded with India, but later she often sailed between Great Britain and her Australasian colonies carrying emigrants. She was wrecked in 1864.
Blackwall frigate was the colloquial name for a type of three-masted full-rigged ship built between the late 1830s and the mid-1870s.
Cospatrick was a wooden three-masted full-rigged sailing ship that caught fire south of the Cape of Good Hope early on 18 November 1874, while on a voyage from Gravesend, England, to Auckland, New Zealand. Only three of the 472 persons on board survived the disaster, which is often considered the worst in New Zealand's history.
The Northfleet was a British full-rigged ship that is best remembered for her disastrous sinking in the English Channel in January 1873.
John Francis was one of a party of bushrangers who held up the Melbourne Private Escort Company's regular escort of gold from the McIvor diggings at Heathcote, Victoria, to Kyneton on the morning of 20 July 1853. At least six men were involved, five of whom including Francis and his brother, George Francis, were apprehended. His brother committed suicide while in custody, but by turning Queen's evidence, Francis escaped punishment and the other three companions were hanged.
Challenger was a wooden clipper ship built in 1852 by Richard & Henry Green, in their Blackwall Yard for Hugh Hamilton Lindsay, London. She was the 291st ship built by the yard and was a remarkable departure from the previous ships produced. In 1850 the American clipper ship Oriental visited West India Docks, the largest clipper ship to visit London and the Admiralty was given permission to take her lines, and this was done by Messrs Waymouth and Cornish, both Lloyd's Surveyors, in the dry dock at Green's Yard in Blackwell. This is probably the reason that it was said that Challenger's design was inspired by and had a close resemblance to the Oriental's.
Lady Denison was launched in 1847 at Port Arthur, Tasmania. She went missing in 1850 while sailing between Port Adelaide and Hobart, Tasmania. At the time there were strong allegations that convicts being carried on board murdered the other passengers and crew and headed for San Francisco, but all contemporary evidence supports the assertion that she sank off the far north-western tip of Tasmania.
Marlborough was an iron-built two-decked merchant sailing ship which disappeared in 1890. She was built by the firm of Robert Duncan and Co., Port Glasgow and launched in 1876. First managed by James Galbraith for the Albion Shipping Company, she was registered in 1880 to the ownership of John Leslie of London, while continuing to operate within the fleet of Albion Line. Marlborough disappeared during a voyage in January 1890, and has not been seen or heard from in over a century. Searches and investigations have yielded nothing conclusive, and the ship's ultimate fate, and that of her crew, remains unknown.
Captain Robert Corbet RN, often spelled Corbett, was an officer of the British Royal Navy during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars who was killed in action in highly controversial circumstances. Corbet was a strict disciplinarian who regularly beat his men for the slightest infractions: so brutal was his regime that he provoked two mutinies, one simply at the rumour he was coming aboard a ship. These uprisings caused him to become even more vicious in his use of punishments and when he took the frigate HMS Africaine into action off Île Bourbon in September 1810, his men failed to support him and may even have murdered him. In addition to his obsession with discipline and obedience, Corbet was regarded as an inefficient commander, whose standards of gunnery and training were so poor that when his ship did go into action it was ill-equipped to fight the French frigates stationed in the Indian Ocean.
Comet was an 1851 California clipper built by William H. Webb which sailed in the Australia trade and the tea trade. This extreme clipper was very fast. She had record passages on two different routes: New York City to San Francisco, and Liverpool to Hong Kong, and beat the famous clipper Flying Dutchman in an 1853 race around the Horn to San Francisco.
Punjaub was a sail/paddle steamer frigate built for the Indian navy operated by the East India Company.
Victory was built by Fenwick & Co, Sunderland in 1847, and owned by Willis, Gunn and Co and later owned by Wilson and Cook. She was a 578- or 579-ton barque that brought some of the first immigrants from England to Dunedin in July 1848. She also called at Wellington, New Zealand, in August 1848. There was an advertisement that gave her weight as 700 tons, but, given that her captain in 1851 was Mullens, it was unlikely to be another ship.
Parramatta was a sailing ship launched at Sunderland in 1866 that operated between Great Britain and Australia and America from 1866 to 1898. She was the second fastest Blackwall frigate. She originally carried wool from Australia to the United Kingdom. She foundered in 1898.
The SS Schomberg was a clipper built in Aberdeen by Alexander Hall & Co. for "the Black Ball line" for carrying large cargoes and steerage passengers, and to "outdo the Americans". When built, she was regarded as the most luxurious and well-built clipper of the period.
Several vessels have been named Brilliant:
United Kingdom
