The opium clippers / by Basil Lubbock.

  • Lubbock, Basil, 1876-1944.
Date:
1933
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The opium clippers / by Basil Lubbock. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The Opium Passages, 1831-1833. I should have liked to have been able to give details of the best opium passages each season; but at this distance of time such records are no longer procurable and it is only possible to give a very incomplete record of the passages, especially outwards, when the movements of the clippers, up to the time of the first Chinese war, were always kept as secret as possible. The early English newspapers in the East do, however, give a good many arrival and departure dates; but unfortunately neither the India Office, the British Museum nor any other public library possess the very early numbers of such papers as the Calcutta Englishman, the Singapore Free Press, or the Canton Register. Besides these sources of information there are the captains’ letters and ships’ logbooks. Though I have been lucky enough to come across a few captains’ letters and abstracts, not an opium clipper’s logbook has come to hand. On her second outward passage against the monsoon, Red Rover left Calcutta on December 30,1830, was off Penang on January 8, 1831, reached Singapore on January 13; here she remained until the 18th, then proceeded to beat up the China Sea against the strength of the monsoon with such success that she took her Canton pilot on February 7, only 20 days out from Singapore and 39 from Calcutta. That the weather was against her is proved by the fact that H.M.S. Crocodile, 28-gun corvette, and the country ship Penang Merchant, which attempted to follow her, both had to put back in distress, the heavy weather being too much for them. The Red Rover arrived back in the Hooghly, on March 14, 1831, her round voyage, including days in port, having only taken 76 days. These details are taken from Captain Clifton’s own passage abstracts and an article in the Englishman. The little clipper’s performance raised a great stir in Calcutta, for until she showed the way the only method of reaching China during the N.E. monsoon was by Pitt’s Passage, a route which usually took from three to four months. Captain Wilson of the