Conservation Plan 3 Significance.pdf - National Maritime Museum

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Cutty Sark Conservation Plan vol. 3: Significance 10 of 107 As evidenced in the previous section, the career of Cutty Sark has been well documented. It is not the intention to re-write her history here, but simply to set out the most pertinent facts relating to her context, functions and story. 2.1. Tea and Merchant Sailing Ships 19th-century China Tea Trade Development and Demise of the Clipper The opening up of Canton, Amoy, Foochow, Ningpo and Shanghai to free trade as a result of the Treaty of Nanking in 1842 (and the subsequent opening-up of the ports on the Yangtze after the Treaty of Tientsin in 1858) resulted in an explosion is the export of Chinese tea. In 1835, Britain imported 44.3 million lbs: in 1849, this had risen to 55.5 million lbs. It became fashionable to drink the freshest tea and particularly from the first ship to arrive with that season’s cargo. The first tea brought home therefore commanded a premium price. Although iron ships were common in the second half of the nineteenth century, it was thought that the lack of ventilation ‘sweated’ tea cargos, a belief that persisted for many years. The characteristics of the clipper were a sharp bow with fine lines, a large sail area and a relatively small cargo-carrying capacity. The term ‘clipper’ has no precise definition, but distinctions are now made between ‘medium clippers’, ‘clippers’ and ‘extreme clippers’ depending on the degree of sharpness in the hull form. Cutty Sark is classified as an extreme clipper.
Cutty Sark Conservation Plan vol.3: Significance The majority of UK-registered clippers were built between 1853 and 1870. Not all clippers were built for the tea trade: most notably (as she also survives) City of Adelaide, an emigrant/cargo vessel, built for trading with Australia, and Patriarch, an iron-hulled clipper built specifically for the Australian wool trade (wrecked 1912). Speed was the essential characteristic of the clipper. The most celebrated race was in 1866 when Ariel docked in London a mere ten 10 minutes before Taiping after a 99-day voyage from China. It is notoriously difficult to compare one tea clipper against another, given different dates of departure and routes, but Cutty Sark was undoubtedly one of the fastest, repeatedly getting away from China before her rivals. The fastest of the tea clipper of all is generally considered to be Thermopylae. However, once in the wool trade, although she made some very fast passages out to Australia, but never made the speedy passages back to London that that Cutty Sark achieved. The fastest wool clipper is generally considered to have been the iron-hulled Patriarch, although Cutty Sark is also considered as the only ship that could match her (and indeed did). Indicative sailing times are included in the following table. The more economical steamships eventually replaced the clippers, but large sailing ships — particularly four-masted barques — continued to trade between Europe and the other continents until the eve of World War II. 11 of 107
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