''Taitsing'' was a famous British tea clipper.

Tea Clipper Taitsing

''Taitsing'' was a

full-rigged A full-rigged ship or fully rigged ship is a sailing ship, sailing vessel's sail plan with three or more mast (sailing), masts, all of them square rig, square-rigged. A full-rigged ship is said to have a ship rig or be ship-rigged. Such vessels ...

, composite-built

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 ...

, measuring in length, with a beam of and a draught of . She was built in 1865 by Charles Connell & Co,

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, for Findlay & Longmuir, Greenock, Scotland. The ship sailed from

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Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...

ports like

Amoy Xiamen ( , ; ), also known as Amoy (, from Hokkien pronunciation ), is a sub-provincial city in southeastern Fujian, People's Republic of China, beside the Taiwan Strait. It is divided into six districts: Huli, Siming, Jimei, Tong' ...

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 ...

Wusong Wusong, formerly romanized as Woosung, is a subdistrict of Baoshan in northern Shanghai. Prior to the city's expansion, it was a separate port town located down the Huangpu River from Shanghai's urban core. Name Wusong is named for the Wus ...

, Fuzhou, and

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flowin ...

. She also travelled from Fuzhou to New York in 1874. In 1876 the ship was sold to James Findlay of Greenock. She was sold to John Willis & Son obert D. Willisof London in 1879.

The Great Tea Race of 1866

Laden with just over a million pounds (453,600 kg) of tea, ''Taitsing'', under the command of Captain Nutsford, raced nine other ships from China to

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

in The Great Tea Race of 1866. The first five ships – ''Taiping'', ''Ariel'', ''Serica'', ''Fiery Cross'', and ''Taitsing'' – finished the 14,000- nautical-mile (25,930-km) race within three days of each other. ''Taitsing'' arrived fifth, in "the closest run ever recorded." ''Taitsing''′s best 24-hour run during the race was on 2 July 1866, when she traveled , averaging ).

Sinking

''Taitsing'', carrying a load of patent fuel from Swansea,

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the Bristol Channel to the south. It had a population in ...

, sank in the

Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by t ...

off Nyuni Island,

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, on 20 September 1883.

In culture

A painting of ''Taitsing'' signed by the Chinese painter Hingqua, along with a painting of the clipper brig ''Venus'', sold at auction at

Sotheby's Sotheby's () is a British-founded American multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, an ...

in New York City in 2009.

References

External links

Paintings

The Ship ''Taitsing'' entering Hong Kong, July 1877

Clipper ship ''Taitsing'' China trade portrait

"Ship TAITSING Visiting China", David Thimgan, 1955-2003

''Taitsing'', composite ship picture by David Michael Hartigan Little

"Fleeting Colors", British Tea Clipper ''Taitsing'', 1866-67, by Jim Griffiths, Maritime Gallery at Mystic Seaport

Scale model

* * Model built to a scale of 32 feet to one inch. Based on plans from:
Scale model of ''Taitsing''
{{coord missing, Indian Ocean Clippers Individual sailing vessels Tall ships of the United Kingdom Victorian-era merchant ships of the United Kingdom Ships built in Glasgow Shipwrecks in the Indian Ocean Maritime incidents in September 1883 1865 ships Full-rigged ships