In 1872 Ariel was on passage to Australia from London when she disappeared without a trace. Serica, meanwhile, had sailed on the other side of the English Channel and docked on the same tide as the other two ships.Ī row started about which ship was entitled to the premium 10 shillings per ton rate and which captain should receive the £100 bonus. Nevertheless, Ariel had to wait for the tide to rise before she could dock, whereas Taeping locked straight in 20 minutes ahead of Ariel. Ariel reached the entrance to East India Dock an hour before Taeping arrived at the London Dock further upstream. But even in the river, the race was not over. The Taeping secured the faster tug and arrived off Gravesend an hour ahead of her rival. Off Dungeness, they were neck and neck with Ariel taking on board her pilot just minutes before Taeping, as the race continued until they picked up tugs in the Downs off east Kent. As daylight came Ariel’s crew spotted Taeping not far astern. Rough weather in the Agulhas Stream saw the fleet spread well out with Taeping getting a lucky slant of wind to round the Cape of Good Hope and soar away for St Helena and Ascension Island ahead of them all.īy the time they reached Cape Verde, Ariel was in the lead and in the early hours of September 5 she picked up the Bishops Rock lighthouse in the Scillies and she swept up the Channel with a fresh southwest wind averaging over 13 knots. In the run across the Indian Ocean, the lead kept changing between ships. Through the tricky passage down the China Sea and navigating the islands, the ships regularly caught glimpses of one another. All five ships were laden with tea bound for the competitive market in Victorian London. The 195ft LOA, 33.9 ft beamed, and 21ft deep hull was involved in a legendary race (Great Tea Race of 1866) starting on from the Min River in China against the China clippers Taeping, Serica, Fiery Cross and Taitsing. In 1865 the clipper ship Ariel was built by Robert Steele & Sons of Greenock on the Clyde, sister ship to Sir Lancelot. Sadly, in 1869 while loading wool in Geelong Victoria, Australia, Lightning caught fire and had to be sunk. In 1856 during a passage, again from Liverpool to Melbourne, she made 2,188 miles in seven consecutive days. During another passage from Boston to Liverpool, she covered 436 miles in a day’s run, which at the time was faster than any steamship’s best run. Her homeward passage, despite being laden with gold dust and passengers, took just 64 days three hours and 10 minutes – an all-time record. The 244ft LOA, 44ft beam and 23ft draft pine on oak hull made her maiden voyage from Liverpool to Melbourne in 77 days with a 348 mile run for her best day. One of the fastest ships among these clippers was the aptly-named Lightning, built in America by Donald Mackay for English owners. The speeds the fastest of these ships attained remain unbroken today in terms of merchant hulls under sail. I can still hear his boots now going bong, bong, bong down her steel side,” he told me 70 years later, aged 85. “He didn’t hit the sea, he hit the side of the ship. Like all sailors, Grandpa was inspired by the speed of the tall ships, and like those who actually lived through it, he knew the cost a 15-year-old apprentice who worked alongside him on the weather yard lost his footing and fell.

They were stored in a spare room, too many to hang in his tiny home. He had prints of them all as I discovered when we cleared his home, following his death. Grandpa experienced the closing chapter on the era of sail but he always admired the long-lost greyhounds of his chosen career, including: Cutty Sark, Ariel, Lightning as well as the aforementioned Thermopylae. Captain Richard Stephens Durham, OBE, started his long life at sea as an apprentice in sail: rounding Cape Horn the wrong way in the three-mast barques Pass of Killiecrankie and Pass of Brander to load guano in Valparaiso, Chile to fertilise the crops of European farmers.

Paternal grandfather’s retirement cottage in Seaford, West Sussex was a Spurling print of the US tea clipper Thermopylae.

Tiny storm in a teacup