Tea Clipper Route
The ultralight sailing ships that raced the new season's Chinese tea to London between the 1840s and the opening of Suez.
Overview
From about 1849, sharp-bowed composite clippers such as Thermopylae and Cutty Sark sprinted from Foochow, Fuzhou, to London in roughly 100 days with the first flush of tea, and the races were national news with heavy betting. The economics demanded speed because early tea commanded premium prices. Many ships then shifted to the Australia wool run. The Suez Canal of 1869, built for steamers, ended the logic: steamer tea arrived weeks earlier, and the freight rates no longer paid for canvas. The clippers remain the most admired commercial sailing ships ever built, and Cutty Sark survives in Greenwich.
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