Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Who built the first clipper ship is still a matter of dispute. What
is beyond doubt is that in the 1840s and 1850s the merchant sailing
ship reached the apogee of its development. Sleek of build and car-
rying thousands of square yards of canvas, these vessels were cap-
able of amazing speed. The 436 miles run in one day by
Lightning
in
1854 is just one of the records set up by the clippers which will nev-
er be broken. They were, of course, made for speed, in obedience to
the age-old commercial dictum that 'time is money'. They were made
for profit-hungry owners, who exerted pressure on flamboyant and
often brutal captains, who drove their ships and men with a ruthless
disregard for anything except making port in the shortest possible
time.
Why all this frantic activity? The rapidly expanding internation-
al markets of the mid-Victorian era provided countless opportunit-
ies for clever shipowners to make fortunes: taking emigrants to the
colonies, bringing tea back from China, gold and wool from Australia,
conveying meat, and exotic fruit to the markets of London, Paris and
New York. Speed was of the essence for a variety of reasons. Perish-
able cargoes had to be brought home in the shortest possible time.
Tea and wool merchants wanted to be first of the season in the auc-
tion houses, to obtain the best prices. Owners tendering for the Roy-
al Mail concession had to guarantee delivery in Melbourne in 68 days
and pay a penalty of £100 for every day over that limit. So keen was
competition for this contract that in 1854 the owner of the
James
Baines
offered to deliver the mails within 65 days - and did so. But,
as the years passed, the fact that the clippers had steamships breath-
ing down their necks became the main incentive to maintain their
reputation for speed and reliability. The titanic struggle between the
old and the new continued until the end of the century and, despite
the rapid improvements in steamship construction and efficiency,
the square riggers saw off the challenge for fifty years.
