A clipper was a type of mid-19th-century merchant sailing vessel, designed for speed. Clippers were generally narrow for their length, small by later 19th-century standards, could carry limited bulk freight, and had a large total sail area. "Clipper" does not refer to a specific sailplan; clippers may be schooners, brigs, brigantines, etc., as well as full-rigged ships. Clippers were mostly constructed in British and American shipyards, although France, Brazil, the Netherlands, and other nations also produced some. Clippers sailed all over the world, primarily on the trade routes between the United Kingdom and China, in transatlantic trade, and on the New York-to-San Francisco route around Cape Horn during the California Gold Rush. Dutch clippers were built beginning in the 1850s for the tea trade and passenger service to Java.
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, coming 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.
Ariel was a clipper ship famous for making fast voyages between China and England in the late 1860s. She is most famous for almost winning The Great Tea Race of 1866, an unofficial race between Fuzhou, China and London with the first tea crop of the 1866 season.
Blackadder was a clipper, a sister ship to Hallowe'en, built in 1870 by Maudslay, Sons & Field at Greenwich for Jock Willis & Sons.
Lothair was a British clipper ship built by William Walker and launched in Rotherhithe, London, on 2 July 1870. After many years of service as a tea clipper, she was operated by merchants in Italy and Peru before being lost in 1910.
Sir Lancelot was a clipper ship which sailed in the China trade and the India-Mauritius trade.
The clipper route was the traditional route derived from the Brouwer Route and sailed by clipper ships between Europe and the Far East, Australia and New Zealand. The route ran from west to east through the Southern Ocean, to make use of the strong westerly winds of the Roaring Forties. Many ships and sailors were lost in the heavy conditions along the route, particularly at Cape Horn, which the clippers had to round on their return to Europe.
George Thompson of Pitmedden (1804–1895) was a Scottish Liberal politician who was The Lord Provost of Aberdeen and MP for city. He was also the founder of the Aberdeen Line shipping company.
In the middle third of the 19th century, the clippers which carried cargoes of tea from China to Britain would compete in informal races to be first ship to dock in London with the new crop of each season. The Great Tea Race of 1866 was keenly followed in the press, with an extremely close finish. Taeping docked 28 minutes before Ariel - after a passage of more than 14,000 miles. Ariel had been ahead when the ships were taken in tow by steam tugs off Deal, but after waiting for the tide at Gravesend the deciding factor was the height of tide at which one could enter the different docks used by each ship. The third finisher, Serica, docked an hour and 15 minutes after Ariel. These three ships had left China on the same tide and arrived at London 99 days later to dock on the same tide. The next to arrive, 28 hours later, was Fiery Cross, followed, the next day, by Taitsing.
The Maritime history of Scotland involves events including shipping, ports, navigation, and seamen, as well as marine sciences, exploration, trade, and maritime themes in the arts of Scotland.
A medium clipper is a type of clipper designed for both cargo carrying capacity and speed. An evolutionary adaptation of the extreme clipper, the medium clipper had been invented by 1851, when the hull type appeared in U.S. shipyards. Medium clippers continued to be built until 1873, when Pilgrim, one of the last known medium clipper ships to be built, was launched by Joshua T. Foster from the shipyards of Medford, Massachusetts.
Cimba was a British-built clipper in the Australian wool trade. She sailed between London and Sydney for 20 years, from 1878 to 1898. In 1905, Cimba set the sailing ship record for a passage from Callao to Iquique, of 14 days.
Lahloo was a British tea clipper known for winning the Tea Race of 1870, and finishing second in the Tea Race of 1871. She sailed from Fuzhou to London with over a million pounds of tea in 1868.
Stornoway was a British tea clipper built by Alexander Hall and Sons in Aberdeen, Scotland in 1850. She was a further development by Hall on the clippers built in Aberdeen in 1848, being larger and more obviously suited to deep sea service. She was ordered by Jardine Matheson specifically for the tea trade. In the late 1840s, tea was available earlier in the season in China, so the first ships to load had to beat to windward against the north-east monsoon to get across the China Sea. The details of the hull shape designed by Hall had this requirement in mind.
John Willis & Sons of London, also called the Jock Willis Shipping Line, was a nineteenth-century London-based ship-owning firm. It owned a number of clippers including the historic tea clipper Cutty Sark.
Coonatto, was a British three-masted clipper that was built in 1863 and wrecked in 1876. She traded between London and Adelaide for 12 years. She was wrecked in the English Channel in February 1876.
Scottish Maid was a Scottish packet boat, a two-masted wooden schooner, built at Alexander Hall and Sons' boatyard in 1839 for the Aberdeen Line. She has been described as the first clipper vessel to be built in Britain. Her design of sharp, forward-raked bow, later called the "clipper bow" or Aberdeen bow, pioneered a succession of larger clipper ships with many also built in Aberdeen on Scotland's northeast coast.
The Great Tea Race of 1872 was a regatta, held in 1872 between two "tea clippers" Cutty Sark and Thermopylae.
Tea race — regatta, clippers with cargo tea along the trade route from China to England and with a cargo of opiuma from England to China. In the middle third of the 19th century, the clippers which carried cargoes of tea from China to Britain would compete in informal races to be first ship to dock in London with the new crop of each season.
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