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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    of London, and 16 shares to the Calcutta merchants, Levington, Syers & Co. The Antonio Pereira had, apparently, one and a half decks, a square stern and a bust figure-head of her namesake. One of the other two clippers was the ex-slave brig Ann, which it was rumoured had been built in the Island of Cuba about 1834, though Captain Henry Pybus, R.N.R., the son of one of her owners, believes that she was built in the West Country. She was condemned at Sierre Leone in 1834 as the Spanish brigantine Tangador; she was bought by Captain Pybus, and sailed out to China from England. The Pybus Brothers. Though Jardine, Matheson & Co. and Dent & Co. had no professional seamen amongst their partners, this was not usually the case with either merchant firms or shipowners in those early days. Nearly every shipmaster ended by owning a few ships, and some of them amassed quite a fleet. Amongst the owners of opium clippers were the two brothers, Captain Henry Pybus and Captain Joseph Pybus, who, when they retired in the middle ’forties, were the owners of ten smart little ships. There was a very well-known sailor and politician of the name of Pybus in Nelson’s time. This was Charles Small Pybus who distinguished himself when master of a Dover packet by beating off three French privateers of superior force. He became M.P. for Dover and Lord of the Admiralty. It was whilst he was in office that Vancouver’s expedition was sent out, and Pybus Bay and Point Pybus, Prince of Wales Island, British Columbia, were called after him. In 1793 Charles Small Pybus sent out a relative named Thomas to construct barracks for the troops in Canada. This Thomas was one of the first to recognise the possibilities of the Canadian lumber trade and also one of the first men to ship timber home. On his return to England he joined his cousin, Joseph Fletcher in the Union Docks at Limehouse. Henry and Joseph Pybus were his third and fourth sons. Henry Pybus went to sea about 1816, and when only 22 years old