We have seen how the Oriental brought a cargo of tea from China to England in 1850, and what interest her appearance excited in London. She was soon followed by the Surprise, White Squall, Sea Serpent, Nightingale, Argonaut, Challenge, and other clipper ships built for the California trade. These American clippers received from £6 to £6, 10s freight per ton of forty cubic feet, with immediate despatch, while British ships were loading slowly at £3, 10s per ton of fifty cubic feet. The American ships made fine passages and delivered their teas in excellent condition; but what especially appealed to the Briton was the fact that they had cleared more than their original cost and running expenses on this, their first voyage.
An able English writer,[7] referring to the American clippers engaged in the China tea-trade at this period, remarks: “This new competition proved for a time most disastrous to English shipping, which was soon driven out of favor by the lofty spars, smart, rakish-looking hulls, and famed speed of the American ships, and caused the tea-trade of the London markets to pass almost out of the hands of the English ship-owner. British vessels well manned and well found are known to have lain in the harbor of Foo-chow for weeks together, waiting for a cargo, and seeing American clippers coming in, loading, and sailing immediately with full cargoes, at a higher freight than they could command.
“This soon became a matter of serious moment, and the arrival of these vessels in the Thames caused great excitement, and aroused no small amount of curiosity and criticism. Even the attention of the Government became attracted towards them, and draughtsmen were sent from the Admiralty to take off the lines of two of the most famous—the Challenge and the Oriental—when they were in Messrs. Green’s drydock.â€�
This state of affairs could not, of course, continue without further arousing British ship-owners and builders to the danger of their position. Here was not one vessel, but a fleet of American clippers bringing cargoes from China at double the rates of freight that British ships could command, and unless some measures were adopted to check this invasion no one could predict where it might end. That British merchants paid so liberally to get their teas to a home market was certainly not because they cherished any special affection for American ships or their owners. They would have been quite as willing to pay British clippers the same freights, had there been any such to receive them, or even Chinese junks, provided the service could have been performed by them as quickly and as well. So we find the British ship-owners and builders of that period forced to exert their finest skill and most ardent energy.
The firm of Jardine, Matheson & Co., of London and China, were the owners of the first clipper ship built in Great Britain. This vessel was the Stornoway, 506 tons, launched from the yard of Alexander Hall & Co., at Aberdeen, toward the close of 1850 for the China trade. It will be recalled that this firm had built the clipper schooner Torrington, for the same owners, four years before. The new ship was named for Stornoway Castle, Lewis, one of the Hebrides Isles, which was then owned by Sir James Matheson, and to which he retired after his long and successful career as ship-owner and merchant in the China trade.
It cannot be said that the Stornoway was a copy of any American model, as a comparison of dimensions will clearly show. Comparing her measurements with those of the American clipper, barque Race Horse, of 512 tons register, built by Samuel Hall at East Boston in the same year, we find:
| Length | Breadth | Depth | ||||
| Stornoway | 157 ft. | 8 in. | 25 ft. | 8 in. | 17 ft. | 8 in. |
| Race Horse | 125 ft. | 30 ft. | 16 ft. | |||
Thus the Stornoway, while she exceeded the Race Horse by 32 feet 8 inches in length and by 1 foot 8 inches in depth, yet had 4 feet 4 inches less breadth; and here began a contest, which extended over so many years, of breadth against length and depth. There can be no doubt that the Stornoway with more beam and the Race Horse with more length and depth, would have been faster, but at the same time considerably larger vessels.[8]
The “Stornoway�