Clipper Ships

The institution of kidnapping sailors to sail under-manned outgoing ships from San Francisco harbor began during the Gold Rush and continued until federal legislation passed in 1915. The text discusses the conditions shipboard which led to shanghaiing, the procedures of shanghaiing, and the organization of the sailors and subsequent federal legislation passed to eradicate the practice.

In the modern era, fast sailing ships were predominantly built and utilized for naval and dispatch purposes. The chaotic economic and political turbulence of the late 18th and early 19th century saw the first development of merchant vessels designed with speed as the primary factor, capacity second. Weatherliness and stability were also standard considerations, usually preceding speed in that an unstable or difficult to sail vessel would result in lost time, cargo, even life. Such were the extreme conditions at the end of the Enlightenment preceding Anglo-American industrialization that produced the first distinct American built class of vessel, the Baltimore Clipper. Descended from a variety of earlier fast sailing vessels, sloops, pilot boats, and galley ships, the Baltimore Clipper developed as a ground breaking ship type taking advantage of the schooner rig and earlier fast sloop hull designs.

Alors que le milieu du XIX° siècle voit le triomphe progressif de la navigation à vapeur dans l’acheminement des correspondances vers l’outre-mer, l’étude d’une lettre pour Melbourne, postée à la fin de l’année 1854, nous permet de rappeler le rôle non négligeable joué par les clippers et la marine à voile dont resplendissaient alors les derniers feux.

A continuation of the story of the inextricable link between the China Tea Trade and Chinese Export Silver and the revelation that the much unheralded 19th century trade of discovering and importing native plant species from China to Britain and America was not only the most profitable of all the China trades, but also highly relevant to the importation of Chinese Export Silver.

The other-worldliness in so many respects the 19th century trade at Canton and other Chinese treaty ports is highlighted in the closing quote of the article “each cup of tea represents an imaginary voyage”;  as true for tea as it is for an item of Chinese Export Silver.