The Great Tea Race Regatta

When one reads about the great clipper ships, such as the Cutty Sark, one becomes spellbound by the races that brought tea from the Far East to England and other ports of call. 

Clipper ships built from 1850 onward at the Aberdeen, Glasgow and Liverpool shipyards competed in the famous annual “Tea Race” to resolve who would be the first to unload the new harvest of China tea after a globe-spanning, 16,000 miles regatta. 

With names such as Crest of the Wave, Fiery Cross, Falcon, Taeping, Ariel, Sir Lancelot, Thermophylae, Flying Cloud, Osaka, The Caliph, Blackadder and Lord of the Isles, the famous tea clippers sailed the oceans carrying their precious tea cargos. 

The tea races were based upon profit, but who can deny the thrill of the Great Tea Races? The Ariel was an extreme composite clipper built in 1865 by Robert Steele & Co., Greenock, dimensions: 197'4×33'9"×21', tonnage 1058,73 tns, 853 NRT. She had 100 tons of fixed iron ballast molded into the timbers. An undated sail-plan in the Science Museum, London, shows her rigged with double topsails and main skysail.

Excerpts from the Ariel’s ship log reads:

• 1865 June 29 - Launched and put on the China tea trade. 
• 1865 October 14 — January 6 - Gravesend — Hong Kong, 79 days 21 hours, pilot to pilot or 83 days anchor to anchor, against the monsoon. 
• 1866 In the Great Tea Race of 1866 Ariel docked at East India Docks 20 minutes before Taeping docked at the London Docks. 
• 1867 Came second after Sir Lancelot beaten by hours after 99 days from Foo-Chow in the Tea Race of 1867. 
• 1868 Arrived as the first ship to London in the Tea Race of 1868, one hour ahead of Taeping. 
• 1872 Posted missing outward bound for China. 

The lone and beautiful survivor, Cutty Sark, was designed by Hercules Linton and built by Scott & Linton at Dumbarton in 1869 as a composite built extreme clipper ship for "Old White Hat" Jock Willis of London. She sailed on the China Tea Trade for a couple of seasons without distinguishing herself. She achieved fame in 1872 by reaching London after having lost her rudder in the middle of the Indian Ocean off the Cape of Good Hope when racing Themophylae for London with the first tea. The Cutty Sark is the only clipper surviving from that glorious period and can be visited by the public at Greenwich, on the Thames. 

Sea travel remains the preferred shipping method for chests of tea. There is still the mystery and enchantment of the ocean and the excitement of opening each chest of tea however, some of us remain captivated by the stories of the clipper ships who raced their way to deliver their tea cargos from distant lands.