Tea race (competitions)

The consignees of these cargoes wanted to be first in the market with this new crop, so they started to offer a "premium" to a ship that was the first to dock in London in that tea season.

A more general premium had become established by 1861, when an extra 10 shillings per ton was given to the first clipper arriving in London, being written into the bills of lading of all the ships loading in China at the beginning of the tea season.

The first identifiable ship to carry a tea cargo with an increased freight based on her performance record was the American China packet Oriental, receiving £2 10 shillings per ton more than any other vessel loading that year.

Carried on old ships,[2] it sometimes stayed on the road for 12 months, damp and saturated with the smells of the hold, moldy and rotten, because of which it lost quality and its price fell.

In the years immediately after this, the independent British tea merchants used ships called Blackwall frigates for China trade.

[1]: 34–35 [3]: 25–26 The conclusion of the First Opium War in 1842 resulted in the imposition on China of five treaty ports, giving British merchants better access to Chinese trade.

The carriage of tea from China to the United Kingdom was therefore no longer restricted to British vessels, so American ships could now take cargoes to London.

After a long journey, September 5 clipper ships: Taiping and Ariel with a difference of 10 minutes at the mouth of the Thames took on board the pilots.

Clipper «Cutty Sark» was built in 1869 at the Scottish shipyard «Linton & Scott» by special order of the shipowner John Willis, to participate in tea races.

The length of this three-masted vessel with 29 main sails was 64.8 m, beam 11.0 m, draft 6.4 m. The Cutty Sark holds the 24-hour record of 363 miles, average ship speed (according to some reports 17.5 knots).