Great Tea Race of 1866
A premium was paid for the first consignment of tea to reach London in each
season. The clipper Fiery Cross left Fuzhou on 29 May
and Ariel, Taeping and Serica on the 30th. On 6 September Taeping docked
twenty minutes ahead of Ariel, and about two hours ahead of Serica. Fiery
Cross and Taitsing arrived two days later.
Taeping and Ariel in the Great Tea Race of 1866
After 99 days and almost 16,000 miles (26,000 km) the leaders were still tied
and raced within sight of each other the full length of the English Channel and
into the Thames. Taeping , under Captain McKinnon, drew less water and was
able to tie up in the London docks twenty minutes ahead of Ariel, under Captain
Keay. Taeping divided her winnings of 10 shillings per ton with the owners
of Ariel and Captain McKinnon divided the captain’s £100 with Captain Keay,
who hailed from Anstruther.
With the completion of the Suez Canal the tea trade was taken over by
steamships and most of the clippers transferred to the Australian trade, carrying
general cargo to either Sydney or Melbourne, and returning with wool – for
which a premium price was also paid on the first shipments of the season.
Loss of the ship
Ariel sailed from London for Sydney on 31 January 1872, but failed to arrive.
She is assumed by most who knew her to have been fatally pooped (i.e., had a
wave break over the stern) – her fine lines always made her at risk of this.
Around August 1872 the remains of a teak-built ship’s life-boat carrying
a brass fitting with the gothic-script letter A were found on King Island in Bass
Strait. It was believed to have come from the missing vessel, which, if the
assumption was correct, probably foundered in the Southern Ocean after
rounding the Cape of Good Hope.