The Great Tea Race of 1866

On a grey morning in late May 1866, the waterfront of Fuzhou buzzed with anticipation. Along the Min River, some of the fastest ships ever built strained at their anchors, holds crammed with the season’s first pickings of China’s tea harvest. To the merchants on shore, and to the thousands of Londoners who would follow their progress, these vessels were not merely cargo carriers. They were thoroughbreds, pitted against each other in a thrilling race that combined adventure with the promise of profit.

For nearly two decades, the opening of the China tea trade each year had sparked fierce competition between the fastest sailing ships afloat. These ships were built for speed, designed to slice through the seas and bring back the season’s first cargo of tea. Fast delivery meant higher prices, prestige for the ship’s owners, and glory for the captain and crew. The annual race from the tea ports of China to the London docks became a spectacle that merchants, newspapers, and the public followed with breathless anticipation.

Ariel and Taeping race each other during the Great Tea Race of 1866, by Jack Spurling. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

The tea trade began in the mid-16th century, when the Portuguese established a base at Macao, just west of Hong Kong. But the remoteness of China, and the emperors’ hostility toward Western merchants eager to trade in silks and spices, meant that the beverage remained almost unknown in Britain until the restoration of Charles II in 1660. For the next century and three quarters, the East India Company held a monopoly on the tea trade, until the passage of the Charter Act of 1833 ended all of the Company’s commercial activities in China and the Far East.

The subsequent repeal of the ancient Navigation Acts—which had banned the import into Britain of goods not carried in a British ship—spurred the construction of faster, more capable vessels, and many private merchants rushed to seize the opportunity. Tea, already Britain’s national drink, was in ever-growing demand. Speed mattered as the first ship to arrive in London with the new season’s tea could command a premium price.

Thus began the informal “tea race” —a high-stakes contest of skill, seamanship, and design.

The vessels that carried this trade were the tea clippers—narrow, tall-masted sailing ships built for speed. Developed in the 1840s and perfected in the 1850s, they could carry large cargoes while maintaining extraordinary pace. The most famous were built in Aberdeen, Glasgow, and along the Thames, their sharp bows and towering rigs designed to cut days, even weeks, off the voyage from China.

The Fiery Cross, built at Chaloner’s yard in Liverpool in 1860, was among the most successful and reliable vessels of the China trade. She was first home in 1861, 1862, 1863, and 1865, earning the coveted tea premium. As the races became a yearly occurrence, London newspapers carried reports of which ships were loading at Fuzhou or Shanghai, which had departed, and where they had last been sighted. Betting sprang up in gentlemen’s clubs and coffee houses. By the 1860s, the races were followed with the same enthusiasm as horse racing or cricket.

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In 1866, the contest would be closer and more dramatic than any before. Five famous clippers prepared for the passage: Taeping, Ariel, Serica, Fiery Cross, and Taitsing. Each was renowned in her own right. The Ariel was newly launched, long, elegant, and thought to be the fastest of her day. The Taeping had already earned distinction for her swiftness and reliability, once completing a passage from China to England in just 89 days. The Serica was a seasoned competitor, while the Fiery Cross had often set the pace in earlier years. The Taitsing, built only the year before, was embarking on her first trip to China.

The race began in the early morning hours of 29 May, when Ariel raised her anchor and slipped out toward the sea. However, her tugboat was underpowered, and the eddies at the mouth of the river were strong, forcing Ariel to drop anchor again. As she waited for the tides to turn, the lighter Fiery Cross, assisted by a more powerful tug, towed past her and headed out to sea. It was not until the next morning that Ariel was able to make her way into open water, with Taeping and Serica only a few minutes behind, while Fiery Cross was already fourteen hours ahead.

The route from the Chinese tea ports to London stretched across the China Sea and the Indian Ocean, past Mauritius, around the southern tip of Africa, and into the Atlantic, generally passing to the west of the Azores before turning toward the English Channel. In the China Sea, the ships wove among countless low-lying islands to catch favorable breezes, but the waters in this region were treacherous with hidden reefs. After leaving Fuzhou, the five ships sailed past the Paracels, down the coast of Annam, and south to Borneo, bound for Anjer, before crossing the Sunda Strait to emerge into the Indian Ocean.

Route of the Great Tea Race of 1866. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

The crossing of the China Sea often decided the overall passage time to London, and it was here that Fiery Cross, despite her head start, fell behind, allowing Ariel and Taeping to move ahead, with Ariel taking the lead. As the ships progressed across the Indian Ocean and around the southern tip of Africa, the race became closer, the lead shifting between the first three. Serica made up much of her lost ground by the time they were passing St. Helena.

On 9 August, some twelve degrees north of the Equator, Taeping and Fiery Cross sighted each other and remained in company until 27 August, when a fresh breeze sprang up which carried Taeping out of sights, while Fiery Cross suffered the enormous misfortune to remain becalmed for 24 hours.

By the time the fleet reached the Azores, the distances between the five ships had narrowed. Ariel, Fiery Cross, Taeping, and Serica all passed Flores on 29 August, with Taitsing trailing forty-eight hours behind. The next critical waypoint was entry into the English Channel.

Ariel and Taeping both reached the Channel on 5 September. The two clippers raced up the Channel, each straining every inch of canvas and driven on by a strong west-southwesterly wind. In the early hours of 6 September, Ariel reached Dungeness, where a pilot came aboard and congratulated Captain Keay on being the first ship from China that season. But there was no time to celebrate, for theTaeping was close astern, and the race was far from over.

Tea Clippers lined up awaiting their cargo at the Pagoda Anchorage, Fuzhou , in 1866. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Both ships had to take tugs to work their way up the Thames. The contest now came down to tides and draft. At 9:00 p.m., Ariel arrived outside the gates of the East India Dock, but the tide was too low for them to open. Taeping, with her shallower draft, pressed on to London Docks and slipped through her gates, entering just twenty-eight minutes before Ariel finally docked at East India at 10:15 p.m.

While Ariel and Taeping were racing up the English side of the Channel, Serica was speeding along the French coast. She passed through the Downs at noon and, just in time, managed to enter the West India Dock at 11:30 p.m. before the lock gates were shut.

Fiery Cross was not far behind the leading three. She reached the Downs at 10:00 a.m. on 7 September but was forced to anchor when the wind rose to gale force. She finally arrived in London at 8:00 a.m. on 8 September. Taitsing followed the next morning, making port on 9 September.

Because the race was so close, both Ariel and Taeping were declared joint winners, and the premium on the first cargo of tea was shared between them. Yet a problem quickly emerged. The steamship Erl King had already docked in London more than two weeks earlier with the first consignment of tea. This meant that although, by prior agreement, the merchants honoured the premium for the cargoes of Ariel and Taeping, they could not sell the tea at a premium in the market, since it was no longer the first to arrive in England.

Worse still, because Ariel, Taeping, and Serica all reached London within hours of one another, they flooded the market with new-season tea, driving prices down. The outcome was a substantial financial loss for the merchants. As a result, the long-standing practice of paying a premium to the first clipper home was abandoned.

The mighty clippers - "Taeping" and "Ariel" racing home neck-and-neck with the new season's tea, by Montague Dawson. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

The races continued for a few more seasons, though never again with the same excitement. Steamships equipped with compound engines could complete the same journey a full two weeks before the fastest clippers. The Erl King, the auxiliary steamer that had outpaced Ariel and Taeping, left Fuzhou seven days after Fiery Cross yet reached London on 22 August—only 78 days after sailing. That same year, another steamer, the SS Agamemnon, set a record outward passage of just 65 days. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 cut the distance from China to London by about 3,250 nautical miles (6,020 km, 3,740 mi), but clippers could not exploit the new route, as sailing conditions in the northern Red Sea were ill-suited to their design. It was the final nail in the coffin.

The last of the true tea races took place in 1872, when Cutty Sark and Thermopylae—two of the most celebrated clippers ever built—sailed from Shanghai. Thermopylae won, reaching London in 91 days, but the contest marked the end of the era. By the mid-1870s, the tea trade had passed almost entirely to steam. The magnificent clippers were sold off, diverted to lesser trades, or broken up. Yet the romance of sail did not vanish. It found new expression half a world away, in what came to be known as the grain races from Australia.

Epilogue

The Great Tea Race of 1866 brought fame to five clippers, but the years that followed scattered them to very different destinies. In 1871, Taeping was wrecked in the China Sea whilst on passage to New York. A year later, in 1872, Ariel disappeared on passage from London to Australia. A lifeboat recovered on King Island in Bass Strait likely shows that she foundered in the Southern Ocean after rounding the Cape of Good Hope. Serica met her end in 1872 when returning from Hong Kong to Montevideo. She was wrecked on the Paracels with only one survivor. Fiery Cross carried her last cargo of tea in the 1872/73 tea season and then continued in general trade until, by varying accounts, she was lost either in 1889 or 1893. Taitsing continued in the China trade, carrying her last cargo of tea in 1874/75. She was lost on the Quirimbas Islands in 1883, en route from Swansea to Zanzibar.