Two different views of the Spindrift, a very fast and beautiful vessel. She was commanded by Robinson’s old rival George Innes and he was completely duped by Robinson during their encounter off the Cape of Good Hope in 1869. The Spindrift was lost later that year in the English Channel due to a negligent pilot. The loss of the vessel was said to have led to have broken the heart of her owner, James Findlay.
Men working in the rigging. On a clipper ship, the constant shifting and tweaking of sails meant endless work and many older sailors avoided clipper ships for this reason.
Against the Thermopylae
Skimming down the China Seas, the Thermopylae gradually picked off vessels that had left ahead of her. The Ariel’s new skipper was not as confident in these treacherous waters and was overhauled before she reached the Sunda Strait, gateway to the Indian Ocean. Kemball had made it in 25 days; a good time, but not a record. Two weeks behind, Robinson was pushing the Sir Lancelot with all of his usual tenacity, using every last ounce of guile to close the gap on his rival; this was a race against the clock and every minute counted. This year of all years, Robinson had reason to race for home; he knew that his wife was pregnant with their first child, the due date some two or three months away. He was distracted with worry about her and the sooner he got home, the better. He drove his vessel with real intent. The Sir Lancelot reached the Sunda Strait in 21 days, a truly remarkable run.
Running down to Mauritius, the Thermopylae started to realise her potential, skipping between the sparkling waves joyously, completely at one with the wind. It was at this point that the Leander was overhauled. This beautiful clipper was passed at close quarters, and her mate described the encounter thus: ‘Thermopylae closed on us rapidly and bore down on us, the most magnificent picture of a ship, she truly walked the waters like a thing of life. We could do nothing but cheer as that damned Scotsman passed us by.’
By the time the Cape of Good Hope had been rounded, it was clear that the Thermopylae was making a phenomenal run and any concerns Kemball may have had about his rivals were being blown asunder by his vessel’s exhilarating speed. The friction at the Pagoda anchorage was forgotten. What did he care, when his ship leapt from wave to wave, her every fibre trembling from the power of the wind in her sails. He was going for a third consecutive record and the miracle of his ship was driving him inexorably to a place in the history books. His crew were jubilant, too; they were racing for home and history. So enthused were they by their ship’s speed that they even spread their jackets in the rigging to help her along.
The Thermopylae at rest.
Behind them, the Sir Lancelot continued to make good time. Robinson never slept and if any of the mates thought about slacking off, he was on to them in a moment. He had perfected the delicate balancing act of pushing hard enough to get maximum speed out of the boat while not breaking anything. To him it was a fine art. Sleep could wait until the passage was at an end. Yet fatigue was making him behave oddly. Off the Cape of Good Hope, the Sir Lancelot caught up with the Spindrift, under the command of Robinson’s oldest rival, Innes. Many times over the years he had tormented his fellow skipper and once again he couldn’t resist it.
Under normal circumstances, a passing vessel would run alongside and signal her name, yet Robinson opted to stand off and signal the name of an entirely different ship, the City of Dunedin. Poor Innes was completely fooled and the Sir Lancelot slid past and disappeared over the horizon. Why he did this to his old adversary, no one knows, but it is possible that he didn’t want to end up in a duel with the formidable Spindrift, for Innes would have chased very hard, had he realised this was one of his rivals.
Up the Atlantic, only the Thermopylae and the Sir Lancelot were in the race, the rest of the fleet left far behind. Robinson was never going to be able to claw back his 12-day handicap, so the race winner was going to be the skipper who made the fastest time. Once the Thermopylae reached the Azores, the crew knew they were witnessing something remarkable. For the first time there was talk of a third consecutive record. Imagine the glory of it; a round-the-world voyage setting a new record time on each consecutive passage. It was unheard of, yet all on board knew that it was possible if the wind just held.
The previous record for the passage made against the south-west monsoon had been set the year before by the Spindrift, which had made it home in 97 days. Yet, on a crisp October day, the Thermopylae came slashing up the English Channel, signalling the Lizard light off the Cornish coast on her 90th day out. On being boarded by her pilot, Kemball welcomed him aboard heartily and then urged him to inspect the clipper’s lee rail. ‘You see that rail?’ he said. ‘That’s the first time it has been out of the water since we left China.’ She then raced up the Channel to dock on her 91st day out, a phenomenal record.
Imagine cutting six days off the fastest time ever previously made. Truly she had earned her gilded cockerel, and Kemball rightly basked in the plaudits of this incredible achievement. As the dark green clipper was hauled into East India Dock, a welcome committee was already waiting, champagne in hand, to greet the crew. Kemball was the toast of the shipping world, and the celebrations and champagne receptions went on for a full week.
Robinson’s final record
On the morning of 10 October, festivities had died down. The last chests of tea had been removed from the Thermopylae’s hold and the ship lay silent and at peace. Yet Captain Kemball was pensive; word had been passed to him that the Sir Lancelot had signalled her number off the Lizard lighthouse and was proceeding up the Channel. She was just 85 days out. On board the Sir Lancelot, neither skipper nor crew could quite believe the time they had made and they could barely imagine that they were still racing the Thermopylae for the record. This was just as well, for light winds meant it took them a further four days to make it to London – making her time a still astonishing 89 days.
The port of London during the age of sail. Clipper ships usually unloaded in East India or West India docks.
The Suez Canal was opened in 1869. It dealt the China tea clipper fleet a crippling blow.
Two examples of the kind of racing steamers that were rendering the clipper ships redundant as soon as the Suez Canal opened. Many captains, including Richard Robinson, switched to steam simply because the money was far better, but the level of skill required was far lower.
The pride of the tea fleet had been maintained, and you can only imagine the chagrin of Kemball as the Sir Lancelot was hauled alongside East India Dock, bedecked with flags. The Thermopylae had held the China record for all of 12 days. Yet there was to be no champagne for the hard-pressed skipper of the Sir Lancelot, for even before he stepped ashore Robinson discovered that his wife, Mary, had died in childbirth. Heartbroken, he returned home to Cumberland even as the first cases of tea were being landed from his ship and the newspapers were heralding his achievement. Every day that he had pushed the Sir Lancelot to the limit to get her home, he had been racing headlong towards a devastating truth that dwarfed the race itself.
Robinson never commanded a clipper again. This desperate, doomed, magnificent final race with the Thermopylae marked the end of an era. 1869 was the year in which the Suez Canal was built, rendering the long passage around the Cape of Good Hope redundant. Steamships, which had previously struggled to make the trip pay, were suddenly in the ascendancy and the days of the tea clippers were numbered.
By 1870, much of the zest had gone out of the racing, as it was clear that a steamship would have her teas on the market long before the first clipper. The Sir Lancelot made her final passage loaded with tea in 1878 and the Thermopylae in 1881. Neither again made the trip home in under 100 days. As for Kemball, he retained the command of the Thermopylae until 1879 and was made commodore of the Aberdeen White Star Line. Despite the controversy, the Thermopylae carried her gilded cockerel proudly at her masthead for the rest of her days.
As for Robinson, he gathered together the pieces of his life and eventually remarried. Never again, however,
did he tread the decks of a clipper ship racing before the breeze. He returned to the tea trade as master of one of the new racing steamships, the SS Lord of the Isles. What he made of this comparatively mundane life after the demands of racing clipper ships is not known, but his exuberance and skill marked him out as the ultimate tea clipper captain and his exploits deserve to be remembered.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE CUTTY SARK’S LONGEST VOYAGE
For three days the clipper ship Cutty Sark had lain hopelessly becalmed off the coast of Java, her sails limp and listless. Aboard her, the crew observed the same stretch of coastline with apathy. Every day the boat was borne by the tide up the coast a few miles, only to be deposited back in the same familiar position a few hours later. It was hot, unbearably hot. Each dawn the sun would rise refreshed after a night’s rest and brutalise the ship. By midday, the heat blurred the horizon and beat down upon the deck until the pitch bubbled in its seams. The sailors cowered under the scant shade provided by the lifeless sails. Darkness brought little relief, for it simply seemed to envelop them in the cloying heat, and all hands would settle down to a night of sweating torment, accompanied by the creak of the ship and groaning of gear. Somewhere on the shoreline, a beacon would wink mockingly at them until dawn finally came.
It was the kind of sticky, humid heat that makes you gasp like a landed fish and it rendered normal shipboard work unbearable. It required a great economy of movement to ensure you didn’t become irritable. Even a short walk along the deck was an exhausting chore. Yet, aboard the Cutty Sark, there was no effort being put into work, for her crew had refused duty. Only the afterguard of officers and apprentices were handling the clipper. Meanwhile, their captain paced the after deck in a state of utter consternation. The crew had gathered forward, congregating in any small pools of shade present.
The Cutty Sark loading tea alongside her deadly rival, Thermopylae.
Having refused duty, the sailors of the Cutty Sark had nothing to do but laze around.
They muttered angrily to one another about the injustice of their situation. Arthur Sankey, an apprentice serving aboard, later recalled that there was one particular old salt who was more voluble than the rest in his complaints. He was a Dutchman and his grating voice croaked out endless tirades throughout those interminable days of calm. ‘This is what comes of sailing on a Friday,’ he rasped. ‘The ship is doomed; did I not foretell back in Swansea that her sails would run red with blood before the voyage was out?’ His pessimistic rants continued through the suffocating afternoon until finally someone told him to shut up.
This merchant of doom had indeed started with his evil prophesies the moment the clipper had left Wales. The old sailor was unquestionably half mad and he had quickly been picked out by the young apprentices aboard as a figure of fun and been given the nickname ‘Vanderdecken’, after the doomed captain of the Flying Dutchman. Yet what had seemed amusing back in Britain was far more disturbing when your boat lay in a clock calm, adjacent to a savage and unknown land, many miles from the cosy comforts of home. Much had happened since the Cutty Sark had left her home country and even her most sunny-natured crew member was starting to believe that the old fool’s prophesies just might be true.
A fine action shot of the clipper Illawarra under sail. This vessel was an example of the later iron clippers which the Cutty Sark was competing within the 1870s and 1880s.
The china tea clipper Lahloo ghosting along in the lightest of airs. In such conditions, the Robert Steele-designed clipper would have had the upper hand over the Cutty Sark.
Every vessel usually had one Jonah aboard and, on this passage, Vanderdecken sapped everyone’s morale.
Back on the poop, things were becoming unbearable for Captain Wallace, who was worried sick about the situation; the intractable crew, the endless calm, the unbearable heat… He knew that his nerves were shot. He hadn’t slept since the clipper had departed Anjer, at the entrance to the Sunda Strait. Since then he had endured nothing but worry. His dream of commanding a fine clipper had turned into a nightmare. He paced the afterdeck with the look of a man absorbed in a puzzle that he simply couldn’t fathom.
The Cutty Sark under way in light airs.
Towards 4 am on the fourth day of that seemingly endless calm, he emerged from his cabin with a new air of purpose. His face was clear and lucid for the first time in days. At the wheel, the helmsman stood rattling the almost useless spokes. Sweat poured from his brow and formed an irritating droplet on the end of his nose. The ship was ghosting along at about two knots and just about had steerage way. Wallace muttered gruffly to the helmsman to keep the course. The helmsman winced at the chiding and wrestled with the spokes. As he did so, Wallace stepped noiselessly onto the taffrail and threw himself overboard. Although the ship was hove-to immediately and a boat was lowered, the captain was gone and a group of circling sharks pointed to a grisly fate. That evening, an apocalyptic sunset filled the sky, while the stunned crew, finally mobilised by the death of their kindly skipper, held an impromptu post-mortem into his untimely demise.
How had the voyage gone so wrong? The trip had started promisingly enough. Captain Wallace was a young skipper and a generous man. He had recently been appointed as captain of the Cutty Sark and had sailed her across from New York to London in the excellent time of 19 days. She had then headed to Swansea to load coal, with instructions to stop at Java, where she would await further orders as to her ultimate destination. At this point no one aboard could have imagined that their popular and energetic captain would end his voyage by taking his own life.
The Cutty Sark racing along under a heavy press of sail.
The year was 1880 and the day of the clipper as queen of the seas was long gone, but the Cutty Sark was still a fine vessel and a prestigious command. Wallace was a man who was doing well for himself and it helped that he was an excellent sailor and a daring skipper. The only real sign of things to come had been that the vessel had departed on a Friday, considered bad luck by superstitious sailors.
Yet the voyage had started well. The Cutty Sark had raced down the Atlantic neck and neck with the beautiful tea clipper Titania, sister to the Ariel and just as fast. For four days the pair had run side by side and although the days of clipper ship racing were fading fast, there was much excitement aboard both ships. The contest evoked memories of the many tea clippers that had raced this stretch of ocean before. As the two clippers danced across the waves, the older sailors aboard reminisced of the golden days and spoke of the Ariel, Taeping, Serica and Spindrift, all now buried in the deep. Only a few surviving clippers clung on in the China trade, the rest driven out by the soulless steamship. Still, here were two of the fleetest clippers running out to China. It was agreed that it was a race to the Sunda Strait and eventually the two ships parted ways on slightly different courses.
Cruel mate
While the race was on, the Cutty Sark was also enjoying excitement of a different kind. Although Captain Wallace was a gentle soul, the same could not be said of the mate, Smith, who liked to play the ‘bucko’, bullying the men about their work. Like all bullies, he liked to single out the weak and, on this voyage, his malevolence fell on a man by the name of John Francis. Although Francis was a strong black man, he was an indifferent sailor, somewhat clumsy and accident-prone. Spotting this, the mate was on to him at every opportunity, driving the poor man to distraction with never-ending racial taunts.
Eventually, Francis started to answer back and, somewhat unusually, Wallace agreed to let the two men slug it out on deck in order to settle their differences. It was a strange step to allow one of his officers to fight with a common crew member, but Wallace must have felt it was the best means to defuse the situation. After 15 minutes of savage blows, the men were parted. There was no clear victor, and this was to have fatal repercussions.
A couple of weeks later, the mate was trimming sail. Francis was supposed to let go the tack, but although the mate sang out, nothing happened. Franc
is was obscured by the sail, so it was impossible to tell whether he simply hadn’t heard the mate or was ignoring his hated tormentor. ‘Bucko’ Smith headed forward to find out what the problem was. He was livid; no one ignored his orders and got off lightly, least of all Francis.
Next thing anyone heard or saw was a sharp crack and a blood-curdling cry. The mate had laid Francis out on deck with a heavy blow from a handspike. Smith stated that he had gone forward and been confronted by Francis wielding the handspike and, in the ensuing scuffle, had disarmed him and laid him out cold in the process. It was unfortunate that there were no witnesses, as three days later Francis died from the injury to his head, never having regained consciousness.
Sailors handling sails aboard the clipper Loch Etive. It was while trimming sail aboard the Cutty Sark that trouble flared up.
The mate’s hazing had already ensured that the atmosphere aboard was tense and, following the death of Francis, things became unbearable. Wallace, although a consummate sailor, had no stomach for dealing with such a matter. His instincts were to pacify and please. Yet this crisis called for the strong arm and, in this, his failings were exposed. The weight of command suddenly bore heavy on the daredevil skipper. Although Smith continued with his work, the murder had given him a bad scare and he begged Wallace to help him. Wallace didn’t know what to do. He was torn between the unspoken unity of the officers and his repugnance for this murderous, cowardly bully. All the while the doom-laden croakings of old Vanderdecken in the fo’c’sle rose more volubly, grating on everyone’s nerves.
Clipper Ships and the Golden Age of Sail Page 12