How fast were clippers

Fashion is a big business and, more over, clothes are not everlasting. New dresses and jeans are needed even by moderate consumer. Changes of the fashion can be foretold. If I understood this correctly, sailing ship could carry summer dresses for girls. They could be loaded during early winter time in Asia and slowly transported to Northern Europe and unloaded during the spring.

Ok, I was a bit brave, but people love sailing ships and they love eco ideology. Finally: a modern sailing ship will be a good tool for a global trade, at least when the businessmen stop fussing nervously and at least try to think further than the next quartal. I agree completely. The energy of the wind could once again help propel bulk carriers around the globe. I think there is a definite future for large commercial sail or sail-assisted ships.

They will not, however, travel faster than container ships. Good article, thanks. It is interesting to note that speeds of the fastest modern catamarans are quite fast indeed. Could a sailing hybrid of some sort match the slow steaming container ships today? Given fuel cost though, not many container lines want to run their ships at that speed…. Skip to primary content. Skip to secondary content. Search for:. They usually carried crews of about 25 to 50 sailors.

Their impact on trade was very significant, as before their introduction, it could take between 12 and 15 months to sail from South Asia to England. By , this journey was halved. The absolute one day distance record made by a clipper involved nautical miles. He began building a series of very successful, very large ships for the California trade. So McKay built clippers that were significantly larger than the old China clippers. This represented a tremendous growth in terms of how big these ships got and how fast they went.

Clipper ships like these helped build San Francisco into the city we know today. This was similar to how Jeff Bezos revolutionized the supply chain for goods from all over the world. The China clippers would bring tea from Canton or Hong Kong to New York, cutting down the typical sailing speed from days to under days. This was truly revolutionary. Robert Waterman had a long history of making record passages from China. While onshore, he was a dandy and a ladies man, but on ships he was an absolute tyrant.

In , he was given command of a clipper ship called The Challenge. She was 2, tons and had masts well over feet high. But Waterman was given the dregs of the waterfront as a crew. Ultimately, there is a near-mutiny, several men are beaten to death or fall from the yard, and the ship sails into San Francisco Harbor after a voyage of days, flying a distress flag.

Waterman is tried for murder in San Francisco. This is one of the more violent episodes in the clipper ship era and exposes to the nation and to the world how men and safety were sacrificed for the quickest possible passage to get goods to market first. This was an era before any sort of regulation of conditions on board or of labor.

The way crews were recruited was a bit like the Royal Navy with its press gangs. Captains would often have a hard time getting enough men to crew up these clipper ships, which needed 50 to 60 men to sail efficiently. The Flying Cloud was unique. She had a very good captain, Captain Josiah Creesy. He had been in the China trade before. He also had a very valuable asset: his wife, Eleanor Creesy , who served as his navigator.

In the Taeping won by only 12 minutes over the Ariel, and only because the captain chose the more risky trip south. He took the risk, like many captains after him, to catch and hold as long as possible the dreaded Roaring Forties. This was the autobahn of the seas. The Rainbow at sea. Difficult seas made ships rocking and rolling, decreasing dramatically the top speed they could achieve. By knowing the local peculiarities of winds and reading weather, Captains were often able to take the optimal courses.

The fall of clippers In the end, as the tea trade was no longer profitable, s Clippers were used to carry passengers, migrants to the USA or between coasts and to Australia, notably for the wool trade.

For long sea voyages, they were free of any space taken by coal of machines and thus carried more goods for the same size. A few routes were profitable, notably Boston to San Francisco, and to Australia, motivating Australia to built a few clipper in turn. The other traditional European shipbuilders also produced some fine clippers, notably in France and the Netherlands.

The Panic of started the downslide for Clippers. The disruption of the Secession war for international trade also, and gradual restrictions of trade in China, plus the rapidly moving nature of markets trades. In , the opening of the Suez Canal made their fast trip round Africa useless and steamers, slower but more regular, were just better at making profit on the new route to the far east. A new breed appeared, the steam clippers , which fired their boilers and lowered their removable screw propeller each time the wind died.

The weight and size of the steam engines and associated coal made these ships slightly bulkier and with less capacity, but this was compensated by their regularity on the long run. Some were also reconverted as had hoc frigates , like those of the American Civil War mounting cannon, carronades, used for piracy, privateering, smuggling, or as blockade runners.

Clippers were not completely extinct after s though. Composite steam clippers, arguably much slower but carrying more due to their stronger ans larger hull, proved more profitable. Soon, the rule of windjammers, three four and even five barque and schooners replaced he wooden wonders of the s.

In , the numbers of sailing ships was still very impressive. U-Boat warfare soon condemned the tall ships trade which emerged depleted from the war. The last of these great ships slowly vanished in the interwar, such as the Preussen. Perhaps the last war action by a clipper was from the memorable Seeadler , which proved that old school sailing privateers could be just as effective. As of today only one great classic clipper of the golden age survived: The Cutty Sark.

Unfortunately despite such a rich history, no American clipper has survived. Composite construction of clippers Other countries Australian Clippers The record-beater Australian clipper Lightning of The gold rush in Australia motivated the construction of clippers. They used the western winds, from Europe to the east, via the cape of good hope, reached Australia and came back loaded with Asian goods through the pacific south and the same winds via the cape Horn to Europe.

She made London-Shanghai in 98 days, showing it was possible for an iron clipper to do just as good as wooden ones. She won the tea race of The most famous Australian clipper of that era was the James Baines Californian-built made Liverpool-Melbourne on a regular basis and her first crossing in 63 days. She reached the record-breaking speed of 21 knots in and under Captain C. McConnell made Boston-Liverpool in 12 days, 6 hours.

Learn your sails! But soon she was beaten back by the Lightning , made by the same yard for the same company. Carrying wool to UK, she made the trip in 63 days and less hours, the world record. Her sail area was greater, with a mainmast reaching 50 m above the deck, 29 m wide for her largest sail, and 49 m wide with the addition of studding sails. She also made a record 24 hours run at On the Australian line, thanks to the roaring 40, Australian Clippers had no competitors, especially packet boats and heavier medium mixed clippers.

They stat active in the s even after the opening of the Suez canal, which only shortened their trip for miles, whereas the miles between Europe and Australia used western winds to best effect. Australian clippers therefore were the last in use anywhere in world, up to the s.

Of course, composite or iron-built clippers became the norm. French Clippers Called "Havrais" Form the Havre, main French sailing trade port , or "Cap-Hornier" in reference to Cape Horn , the French Clipper era preceded the tall ship traders, generally built in iron and then steel up to France has one of the finest clippers that roamed the seas, although their story is seldom known in the Anglo-Saxon world, to the point the very term "French clipper" equates a big interrogation point.

We will try there to correct that issue. Development of French Clippers was slower and later, mostly due to the lack of prospect for such trades. Only by seizing the colonial Empire of Indochina in the s the French could deploy their own long range trading networks, taking advantage of classic Clippers. But by that time they were already composites and many had steam engines. North African colonies on the other hand did not required anything else than steamers, from France, then far behind its partners in terms merchant tonnage 9th rank , implemented a resolute policy for promoting sail, by offering bonuses to yards, as their total absence of coal consumption made them interesting for carrying particular goods.

Companies called in French "armements" such as Bordes , in Nantes, which launched in 30 years some iron tall ships, specialized in carrying coal and cereals from the United States and nitrates from Chile. Of course the war of would cripple this fleet. Such sailing vessels were easy pickings, easy to spot and slow enough to be catch by a submarine and destroyed by gunfire. Nowadays France has a single of these medium iron clipper preserved for us to see, the s nitrate carrier called the Belem , a familiar sight in tall ships events around the globe.

She has been inspired by a medium-clipper model of showcased at an exhibition in Amsterdam by the Dutch lieutenant-commander M. She carried both cargo and passengers, fully rigged with royals and skysails on three masts. On the line Netherlands-Java she made the trip in 89 days and later in 76, 74 and 77 days, whereas the normal trip would be days and more.

More to Come American Clippers Baltimore Clippers Author's illustration of the Pride of Baltimore, a replica of an east coast privateer, blockade runner clipper. All the following profiles are also from the author. These fast coasters mainly built at Baltimore from the s were designed for trade around the thirteen colonies and the Caribbean Islands. They played their part in the independence, scouting for the insurgents, and were very fast thanks to their "V"-shaped cross-section below the waterline, strongly raked stem and masts.

They could have been originated not from the east coast but from the Bermuda sloop, made for open ocean. The fact they were very fast and made for speed whereas used for trade with the full knowledge that time was money made them the first clippers.

During the war, Baltimore clippers rose to fame. There was yet a very young USN 13 october , and alongside the famous "super frigates" of the USS Constitution class , Baltimore and other ports could offer privateers using Clippers. They were given letters of marque but traded, used as blockade runners, and many were captured by the British.

In addition many new such vessels were developed specifically for war: They were larger and faster yet heavily armed. Like battlecruisers they were designed to catch up any ships or skirmish with larger ones. The Royal Navy appreciated these clippers and used them after the war to chase off slave ships.