The competition for speed received a great stimulus from the opening of Foochow as a regular tea-shipping port in 1856. The port had been hindered by official restrictions from enjoying its natural advantages at an earlier period, and it was mainly due to the enterprise of the leading American house that these obstacles were at last removed and the produce of the Bohea hills diverted to its proper outlet. The event marked an epoch in the tea trade; for Foochow being so much closer to the plantations than the other two ports, it became possible to put on board there the first growth of the season with a prospect of landing the new teas in London a couple of months earlier than the trade had been accustomed to. It may be mentioned as one of the curiosities of conservatism that this very circumstance was used to the commercial prejudice of shipments from the new port. It was revolutionising the established routine of the trade, would interfere with the summer holidays, and it was gravely argued that October was the very earliest time when the London buyers could be induced to attend to the tea-market. But the fragrance of the new tea was irresistible in dispersing such cobwebs. So far from its coming too early to market, the best shipbuilders in the world were soon engaged in constructing ships that would accelerate the arrival of the new tea by as much as a couple of days. And so hungry was the trade that special arrangements were made to facilitate the brokers obtaining samples to sell by before the vessel passed Gravesend, and he would be an obscure grocer who was not able to display in his shop window a tea-chest bearing the name of the clipper on the day following her arrival in the dock. The annual tea-race from Foochow thus became one of the events of the year. Premiums were paid to the winner, and sliding scales of freight were in course of time introduced, graduated by the number of days on passage.
No better proof could be adduced of the high excellence of the ships as well as of the good seamanship of their commanders than the exceeding closeness of the running on that long ocean voyage of twelve thousand miles. Several times it happened that vessels starting together would see nothing of each other during the hundred days' passage until the fog lifting in the Downs would reveal them close together, from which point the winning of the race depended on the pilot or the tug. Of the great race of 1866 Mr W. S. Lindsay, from whose valuable work on Merchant Shipping we have drawn freely for these details, says: "This race excited extraordinary interest among all persons engaged in maritime affairs. Five ships started—the Ariel, Taeping, Serica, Fiery Cross, and Taitsing. The three first left Foochow on the same day, but lost sight of each other for the whole voyage until they reached the English Channel, where they again met, arriving in the Thames within a few hours of each other." Very fast passages continued to be made after that time. The Ariel and Spindrift raced in 1868, and the Titania made a quick run in 1871; but Mr Lindsay awards the palm to the Sir Lancelot and Thermopylæ as "the two fastest sailing-ships that ever traversed the ocean." The former vessel, 886 tons register, made the run from Foochow to London in ninety days in 1868, and an interesting fact is recorded by the owners of that fine ship bearing on the propelling power of sails. Many experienced navigators had during the clipper-racing entertained misgivings as to the value of the excessive amount of sail and the heavy rig which were deemed necessary to the equipment of a clipper. The ships, they said, "buried themselves under the press of canvas." Writing seven years after the performance just mentioned, the owner of the Sir Lancelot said: "After the mania for China clipper-sailing I had 8 feet cut off from all the lower masts, and reduced the masts aloft and the yards in proportion. Yet with that (and no doubt a proportionately reduced crew) she maintained her speed undiminished." This was not an uncommon experience.[30]
It is not to be supposed that the produce of China or the imports into the country were all carried by clipper ships. Theirs was a special service reserved for the most valuable produce and for the first few weeks of the season. After that fitful fever the trade of the year settled down to what may be called daily-bread conditions, when ships with moderate speed, large capacity, and frugally sailed, made steady and substantial profits for their owners. It is a commonly accepted maxim that the race—for profits, at all events—is not always to the swift. It was a saying of Mr Green, whose firm owned a large fleet of ships in the Australian and Indian trade, that in his balance-sheet for the year he found that his slow ships had paid for his fast ones. Nor did this economic rule lose its validity when steam came to supersede sail.
The clippers proper had not had a clear run of fifteen years when steamers began to trespass on their preserves. The possibility of a successful steam voyage round the Cape began to be proved in 1864, and was demonstrated in 1866, when Mr Alfred Holt of Liverpool first established his "blue-funnel" line, beginning with the Ajax, Achilles, and Agamemnon. But though sailing clippers were displaced, the sporting element in the China trade was not extinguished. The opening of the Yangtze revived the interest in early arrivals of tea by bringing the "black leafs" of Hunan and Hupeh to the sea nearly as soon as the "red leafs," whose outlet was Foochow. The produce of the central provinces up till 1861 was conveyed by a slow and expensive route, a considerable portion of it on the backs of porters, to Canton. Hankow when opened became at once the entrepot for these teas, and sea-going ships began to load their cargoes in the very heart of the Chinese empire. For some years there had been two sets of races—one from Foochow and one from Hankow—which took the wind out of each other's sails, and the sport became somewhat stale.
It was the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, and the consequent improvements in the construction of steamships, that gave its full value to the Yangtze as a trade route. For then ocean steamers loaded at Hankow with all the advantages of the short route and convenient coaling-stations, and the old excitement of the Foochow racing was revived under a still higher pressure. Every year witnessed some new design for combining the maximum cargo and coal stowage with the maximum speed, so that new tea, which but a few years before was landed in November, now came to market early in July. The last great race occurred in 1883 between the Glenogle and Stirling Castle. By that time Indian tea was rapidly gaining the ascendant in the great consuming marts, displacing the Chinese article, which could no longer afford the prestige of being carried by steamers built and run regardless of expense. Thenceforth all Far Eastern produce found an everyday level; merchandise was carried to and fro by regular lines, with measured intervals of sailing, all the year round, freights were fixed by common agreement, and the trade assumed a character of an omnibus traffic on a large scale.
The Suez Canal produced an immense lateral extension of trade with China by bringing the Black Sea, Mediterranean, and North Sea ports into direct communication with the ports of the Far East. The Russian volunteer fleet, composed of very large and swift steamers, each capable of conveying 2000 troops, carried tea direct from Hankow to Odessa. Trade with Marseilles and Genoa was developed by British and German enterprise as well as by the Messageries Maritimes of France. Antwerp, Bremen, and Hamburg became the terminal ports for important lines of steamers. The mercantile navy of Japan had not risen into general notice during the earlier time with which we are principally concerned, and it would deserve a treatise by itself.
By a process of natural selection native shipping in China and Japan has been extensively superseded by foreign, and an immense dislocation of capital has in consequence taken place. The effect of this has been severely felt on the China coast, especially in such large shipping ports as Taku, Shanghai, and Ningpo, where there were in former days large and prosperous shipowning communities. The disturbance has probably been much less marked in Japan, owing to the greater agility of the people in adapting themselves to inevitable changes. Certain it is that in both countries there is still a large junk fleet employed in the coasting trade, being protected against foreign as well as steam competition by their light draught and their privilege of trading at ports not opened to foreign trade.
The temptation to evade the prohibition of foreign flags led in former days to sundry bizarre effects on the coast of China. The natives, finding it to their advantage to employ foreign vessels, exercised their ingenuity in making them look like Chinese craft. This would at first sight appear no easy matter, seeing that the Chinese junks carried no yards and their hulls were of a construction as different from that of a modern ship as was possible for two things to be which were intended for the same purpose. The junks possessed certain qualities conducive to buoyancy and safety, such as water-tight bulkheads, which at once strengthened the hull and minimised the danger of sinking. But their sailing properties, except with the wind "free," were beneath contempt. Their weatherly and seaworthy qualities commended vessels of foreign construction to the Chinese traders, while the talisman of the flag was deemed by them a protection against pirates, and perhaps also, on occasion, against official inquisition. Probably what on the whole the native owner or charterer would have preferred was that his ship should pass for foreign at sea and for native in port. To this end in some cases resort was had to hermaphrodite rigging, and very generally to two projecting boards, one on each side of the figurehead, bearing the staring Chinese eye, such as the junks south of the Yangtze carry. The open eye on the ship's bow was to enable the Chinese port officials to close theirs to the unauthorised presence of strangers, and thus everything was arranged in the manner so dear to the Chinese character.
In the south of China the advantage of the flag was sought without the foreign appearance of the vessel. The foreign flag was hoisted on native-built small craft, a large fleet of which hailed from Macao under Portuguese colours, and were from time to time guilty of great irregularities on the coast. The Chinese of Hongkong, British subjects born and bred, registered their vessels and received colonial sailing letters, renewable at frequent intervals, as a check on bad behaviour. With these papers short trips were made along the south coast, and a local trade was carried on in the estuary of the Canton river. These vessels of about 100 or 200 tons burthen were called "lorchas," of which we shall hear more in subsequent chapters.