The First American Ship to Carry Tea from China to London
This is one of the earliest clippers to carry tea from China to Europe. It was built in the United States to carry a cargo of tea from China to London after the repeal of the Navigation Laws, but it’s now part of the National Maritime Museum . In 1849, there was an American clipper ship called the Mary Low. She was 185 feet long, 36 feet wide, and built of live oak, white oak, locust and cedar with a deck of white oak.When her second voyage was going to be a long one, it took her 81 days to reach Hong Kong.Then he became chartered by Russell & Co. to carry tea to London at £6 per ton of 40 cubic feet, even as British ships went begging for London cargoes at £3 per ton of 50 cubic feetThe Oriental brought over one thousand tons of tea to London in 1852, which would have taken at least two years to achieve.The cost of building this ship was $70,000. She made 48 grand off just one tea In her first 370-day ocean crossing from New York to London, the boat sailed more than 65,000 miles and she averaged about 185 miles a day.On January 26, 1853 she sailed from New York under command of Captain Fletcher and arrived in San Francisco in early May after a passage of 101 days.Off the coast of Cape Horn, she lost her foremast and it had to be.As Oriental made her way around the Cape of Good Hope to the East Coast of North America, she had to cross the International Date Line. In China, in 1854, when she was being towed out of Foochow by local boats and under pilot directions, she hit a rock and sunk. California clippers (also called clippers) are ships that follow in the wake of another ship. The British were losing tea sales to American ships, so the British started building clippers that could compete with the Americans in the tea trade.
