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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    This little schooner had been built by Mr. No sooner had he heard this story than Joseph Pybus hurried off to Shoreham. There he was informed that the smartest vessel in the whole Mediterranean green and dry fruit trade was a schooner of the name of Time, registering close on 140 tons, and about 90 ft. in length by 20 in breadth and 10 ft. depth of hold, built by his father’s firm, Henry Fletcher, Son & Fearnall at Poplar in 1832. This little heeler was so sharp and had so much dead rise that, when Captain Pybus overhauled her, he found when standing in her hold he had to rest one foot on the keelson and other on the ceiling. After buying her, he made two voyages to the Mediter¬ ranean to learn all there was to schooner sailing. He then had her raised 2 ft. all round, as her freeboard was a bit low for the China Seas. He armed her with a brass 12-pounder long-tom amidships, and six 4-pounder broadside guns. She had been ranterpike rigged, but young Joseph Pybus resparred her as a rakish topsail schooner. Shipping a crew of 26 all told, he sailed out to the Cape in 54 days. Here coasting freights were so attractive that he remained for a whole year before going on to join his brother. During this year he very nearly went to Davy Jones’s Locker. The Time—which, by the way, had a figure-head of Father Time—was lying hove to in a heavy gale off Cape Recife with the helm lashed. Captain Pybus was below when a heavy sea struck her, the ballast—sand—shifted to lee¬ ward and she went over on her beam ends, not quite as far as the Raleigh but far enough to send the crew into the rigging. As she went over, a hawser coiled down on deck was washed over the companion hatch, preventing it from being opened and confining Pybus below for 36 hours. The gallant little ship weathered it out till it moderated, when the crew were able to trim the ballast and get her back on an even keel. The other clipper was a Boston brigantine, which was sent out by Captain Forbes. Forbes sends out the Brigantine “ Rose.” The 150-ton clipper brigantine Rose was designed bv Joe Lee and built by Barney at Swansea, R.I., to the order of Captain Bally of Shoreham.