The Red Rover’s Revolution…he sandbars, and the monsoon. But the vessel taking form under his supervision was unlike anything he had previously launched. Her name was Red Rover. She would displace 254 tons—a modest burden for a ship intended to carry one of the most valuable cargoes in the world. Her lines were sha…
A Fleet Takes Shape…go would be ashore before the sun cleared the hills above Canton. The speed of the ship had become the speed of the entire system. What the Red Rover had proved possible in 1829, the trade now required as standard practice. This chapter shifts from a single pioneering vessel to the rapid…
The Lintin AnchorageThe Red Rover dropped anchor off Lintin Island in the spring of 1833, her hull still bearing the dark paint that marked her as one of William Clifton’s v…
The Red Rover’s Revolution…and the most to gain, from whatever came next. In Calcutta, in the autumn of 1829, the next thing was taking shape on the stocks at Captain William Clifton’s yard. Clifton had built ships before. He knew the Bengal trade, the pilots, the sandbars, and the monsoon. But the vessel taking form und…
A Fleet Takes Shape…ht wait weeks while the market moved against her. The Red Rover, built in 1829, was a 254-ton clipper built, owned, and operated by Captain William Clifton, and she was one of the fastest opium clippers running between Calcutta and Lintin in the 1830s. She was modeled after an American War of 1…
The Lintin AnchorageThe Red Rover dropped anchor off Lintin Island in the spring of 1833, her hull still bearing the dark paint that marked her as one of William Clifton’s vessels. The voyage from Calcutta had taken seventeen days. Boats lowered from her davits. Men in loose cotton shirts rowed toward the re…
The Empire’s Last Monopoly…nts. By 1830, the enemies of the East India Company had begun to triumph, and its hold on trade with the East had noticeably weakened, with Jardine Matheson by then controlling around half of China’s foreign trade. But in 1828, the Company still held its charter, and its ships still dominated th…
The Red Rover’s Revolution…pium. A letter arriving before the competition could mean the difference between buying at the right price and buying at the wrong one. The Jardine Matheson letter books, those massive volumes of correspondence that documented every transaction, every rumor, every piece of intelligence that pass…
A Fleet Takes Shape…er Witch in, market up, buy. The rivalry between agency houses now expressed itself in ship design. Dent & Co., the principal competitor to Jardine Matheson in the opium trade, responded by ordering their own clipper from a Bombay shipyard. The vessel combined British construction techniques wit…
The Empire’s Last Monopoly…Matheson & Co. was among the most prominent, though in the late 1820s it was still one of several firms competing for a share of the trade. William Jardine had arrived in China in 1802, a young Scottish physician who had traded his medical practice for a career in commerce. Educated in medicine…
The Red Rover’s Revolution…pose: outrunning the monsoon winds to deliver the first opium of the season. The men who came to examine her plans understood the calculus. William Jardine had arrived in Calcutta that year with a reputation already established in Canton. James Matheson, his partner, had been watching the shipp…
A Fleet Takes Shape…who could shave days off the passage from Bengal. The competition had begun almost immediately after the Red Rover’s first successful runs. William Jardine, watching the vessel’s performance from his desk in the Canton factory, understood that speed translated directly into profit. An opium cli…
The Empire’s Last Monopoly…rce. Educated in medicine at the University of Edinburgh, he had obtained a diploma from the Royal College of Surgeons before sailing east. James Matheson, another Scot, had come later, and the two had eventually formed a partnership that would become one of the most powerful commercial enterp…
The Red Rover’s Revolution…amine her plans understood the calculus. William Jardine had arrived in Calcutta that year with a reputation already established in Canton. James Matheson, his partner, had been watching the shipping intelligence with the particular attention of a man who understood that time was money and tha…
A Fleet Takes Shape…fchatel, and was the first clipper to sail to Canton against the wind. Jardine had seen her numbers. He knew what Clifton had accomplished. James Matheson, Jardine’s partner, had arrived at the same conclusion from a different angle. Where Jardine saw operational efficiency, Matheson saw marke…
A Fleet Takes Shape…to be an experiment and became the standard tool of the opium trade. The ships that followed the Red Rover, vessels like the Sylph and the Water Witch, refined the design rather than merely copying it. Each launch triggered a new round of speculation in the Canton clubs and the Calcutta sh…
The Agency Houses Ascendant…e firm had once chartered vessels, paying freight to owners who bore the cost of maintenance and repair, it now began to build a fleet. The Water Witch followed, a schooner of similar design, fast and lean. The firm chartered other vessels when demand exceeded capacity, but the owned ships…
The Water Witch’s Last RunThe captain of the Water Witch had ordered the running lights doused two hours after sunset. The brig lay four miles off the Lintin anchorage, hove-to in the dark swells…
The Captain’s LedgerThe partners looked at each other. The future was uncertain. But for Captain William Clifton, standing on the deck of the Lady Hayes in the South China Sea, the future had narrowed to a single imperative: survival. The typhoon had come down on them in the watch before mid…
Sylph’s Challenge…eveloped a reputation for the audacity of her approaches—coming in close to the Chinese forts, trusting her speed to carry her through. The Lady Hayes, another of the early clippers, had perfected the technique of running without lights at night, invisible to the cruisers patrolling the es…
The Lady Hayes’s Longest VoyageThe master of the Lady Hayes stood at the taffrail and counted the sails on the horizon. Three junks, riding the coastal current, their battened lugsails distinct again…
The Empire’s Last Monopoly…leven days becalmed off the coast of Cochin-China. Now, as his crew furled the worn topsails and the anchor dropped into the muddy water of Lintin Island’s anchorage, he could see the other ships already at their moorings—their cargo long since sold, their captains gone up the river to Canton…
The Red Rover’s Revolution…her, owned her, and would operate her. His investment, his risk. The maiden voyage would be her proving ground. The route from Calcutta to Lintin Island, the receiving station in the Pearl River estuary where opium was stored before being smuggled into China, covered roughly 3, 000 miles. A…
A Fleet Takes Shape…ited to see who would build the next fast vessel, and who would be left behind. By the spring of 1832, the question had answered itself. At Lintin Island, where the receiving hulks rode at anchor in the sheltered bay, the opium trade no longer moved at the pace of the old country ships. A fas…
The Empire’s Last Monopoly…Island’s anchorage, he could see the other ships already at their moorings—their cargo long since sold, their captains gone up the river to Canton to collect their bills and arrange their return cargoes of tea and silk. He was weeks late. The season’s best prices had come and gone whil…
The Red Rover’s Revolution…me to examine her plans understood the calculus. William Jardine had arrived in Calcutta that year with a reputation already established in Canton. James Matheson, his partner, had been watching the shipping intelligence with the particular attention of a man who understood that time w…
A Fleet Takes Shape…y loaded—forty chests to a crab, eight crabs to a tide, and the Sylph’s entire cargo would be ashore before the sun cleared the hills above Canton. The speed of the ship had become the speed of the entire system. What the Red Rover had proved possible in 1829, the trade now required as…
Matheson’s Calculated Gamble…in 1835, the firm had commissioned the first merchant steamer in China, the Jardine, intended as a mail carrier between Lintin, Macau, and Whampoa. On its first trial run from Lintin, forts on both sides of the Bogue opened fire, forcing it to turn back—a warning that the firm’s drive…
Jardine’s Departure…departure. Jardine, Matheson & Co. had sent the first private shipments of “Jardines’ Pickwick tea mixture,” a blend of Chinese teas, from Whampoa aboard the firm’s clippers. The firm had expanded into the opium trade with the same aggressive efficiency, building a fleet of fast ships…
The Jardine Papers Before Parliament…n and sail area sat beside calculations about the timing of monsoons and the disposition of receiving hulks. Market reports from Lintin and Whampoa shared pages with assessments of demand from coastal distributors. The correspondence showed, with the precision of an accountant’s ledger,…
The Empire’s Last Monopoly…the Pearl River estuary. It was late October 1828, and the monsoon had already begun its fitful turn. He had calculated his departure from Calcutta with the care that thirty years at sea had taught him, weighing the known currents of the Bay of Bengal against the accumulated wisdom of t…
The Red Rover’s Revolution…ency houses that had grown rich under the old system were the ones with the most to lose, and the most to gain, from whatever came next. In Calcutta, in the autumn of 1829, the next thing was taking shape on the stocks at Captain William Clifton’s yard. Clifton had built ships before. He…
A Fleet Takes Shape…Water Witch, refined the design rather than merely copying it. Each launch triggered a new round of speculation in the Canton clubs and the Calcutta shipyards. The agency houses that had once competed for access to opium now competed for something more immediate: the fastest hull. The mo…
A Fleet Takes Shape…lk Hercules just after midnight on a March tide. The Chinese broker supervising the transfer checked his watch against the ship’s bell. The Sylph had been sighted that afternoon, beating up the river against a southwest monsoon that should have kept her out for another week. Her arriv…
The Agency Houses Ascendant…he system would face challenge, but when. William Jardine set the letter on the desk between them. The document was a charter party for the Sylph, a schooner of some ninety tons recently arrived at Lintin with a cargo of Malwa opium. The terms were favorable. The captain would receive…
Sylph’s Challenge…and leave the risks to the men at sea. Captain James Innes felt it in the heel of his vessel as she strained against the monsoon swell, the Sylph’s deck angling sharply as the wind caught her acres of canvas. He felt it in the shouts of his lascar crew as they scrambled to trim the sa…