The ''Paul Jones'' was a Medford-built ship, launched in 1843, that brought the first cargo of ice to China.

Voyages

''Paul Jones'' sailed from

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

on Jan. 15, 1843, on her maiden voyage, arriving in

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...

in 111 days, under captain N.B. Palmer. The ship made a fast passage in 1848, from

Java Head Tanjung Layar, formerly Java's Eerste Punt in Dutch, and Java's First Point, or Java Head in English is a prominent cape at the extreme western end of Java, at the Indian Ocean entrance to the Sunda Strait. Java Head is a bluff at the sea's ed ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

, in 76 days.

First cargo of ice to China

''Paul Jones'' sailed in the ice carrying trade, which had been built up over the course of more than two decades by the "Ice King",

Frederic Tudor Frederic Tudor (September 4, 1783 – February 6, 1864) was an American businessman and merchant. Known as Boston's "Ice King", he was the founder of the Tudor Ice Company and a pioneer of the international ice trade in the early 19th century. H ...

. Tudor experimented with various materials for packing and insulating bulk ice, such as "rice and wheat chaff, hay, tan bark, and even coal dust." He eventually settled on sawdust. When Tudor extended the business from Charleston, Savannah, New Orleans, and Havana to the Far East, ''Paul Jones'' brought the first cargo of

ice Ice is water frozen into a solid state, typically forming at or below temperatures of 0 degrees Celsius or Depending on the presence of impurities such as particles of soil or bubbles of air, it can appear transparent or a more or less opaqu ...

to China. R.B. Forbes sent a small quantity of ice to India aboard ''Paul Jones'' in 1843, and a full cargo aboard the ship ''Bombay'' in 1847. Captain Forbes, in his reminiscences, has slightly different dates: "The ''Paul Jones,'' in 1844, took the first American ice to China, and, on her way to Bombay, landed apiece at Singapore; whereupon the Singapore ''Free Press'' congratulated the people on the prospect of getting ice from China! In January, 1847, I was concerned in shipping the first cargo of ice in the ship ''Bombay,'' to Whampoa."

Role in design of the first clipper ship

In 1843, the A. A. Low & Bros. representative in Canton, William Low, and his pregnant wife Ann had been passengers on a very slow and frustrating trip home from Canton with Captain

Nathaniel Palmer Nathaniel Brown Palmer (August 8, 1799June 21, 1877) was an American seal hunter, explorer, sailing captain, and ship designer. He gave his name to Palmer Land, Antarctica, which he explored in 1820 on his sloop ''Hero''. He was born in Stonin ...

on the ''Paul Jones''. "To vent his frustration aptain Natbegan carving a block of wood into the shape of what he thought the ideal hull of a Canton trader should look like, one that .. 'would outsail anything afloat' ... "He incorporated John W. Griffiths' ideas concerning a sharp concave bow with his own ideas of a fuller flat-bottomed hull." Upon arrival in New York, they approached A. A. Low & Bros. with the new design, which was further developed and built by David Brown of Brown & Bell shipyard. The ship, '' Houqua'', launched in 1844, was considered by many to be the first

clipper ship A clipper was a type of mid-19th-century merchant sailing vessel, designed for speed. Clippers were generally narrow for their length, small by later 19th century standards, could carry limited bulk freight, and had a large total sail area. "Cl ...

References

{{reflist Individual sailing vessels Age of Sail merchant ships of the United States Ships built in Medford, Massachusetts History of foreign trade in China Ice trade 1843 ships