[2][3] She is known for a record passage between Greenock and Shanghai, and for her close finish in the 1856 Tea Race from China to England, docking in London just ten minutes before Maury.

She made three voyages to Australia, but her principal route was the tea trade between London and the Chinese cities of Whampoa and Shanghai.

In 1856, Lord of the Isles raced the American clipper bark Maury, for a price of a one-pound-per-ton premium to be awarded to the first ship to reach London bearing the year’s new crop of tea.

After a 127-day voyage and thirteen thousand miles of ocean sailing, the two ships passed Gravesend "within ten minutes of each other".

Captain Davies, the crew and passengers, thirty people in all, made Macao in the ship’s boats, despite being boarded twice by pirates.