5 ms·

A cool bit of trivia I learned just last night: The (sail) record for Hong Kong - New York was set by the then almost-new US ship Sea Witch, one of the original

by TylerE 4y ago

A cool bit of trivia I learned just last night: The (sail) record for Hong Kong - New York was set by the then almost-new US ship Sea Witch, one of the original “clippers” in 1847, at about 78 days. Obviously this is the “long” way, no Panama Canal for you. This was done with a full load of high value cargo (tea, porcelain, spices), which is what the clippers were built to carry. This record was not beaten until this millennium, by a racing trimaran, and even then by less than 10%. Really incredible what Sea Witch did… The captain of the trimaran said there was absolutely no way his ship and crew could have come even close without modern technology - No weather reports, radio, or even especially accurate maps in the mid 19th century. Sea Witch still holds the record for a monohull. This is, as far as I know, the oldest unbroken speed record of any kind.

Seanambers 4y ago
That's insanely impressive.
xboxnolifes 4y ago
Is this record for any sea path from Hong Kong to New York, or specifically the no Panama Canal path?
- TylerE 4y ago
  Probably a distinction without a difference in this case. The Canal really does not like sailboats, so it’s expensive, and can take upwards of a week to get all the measuring and certification done, which must be done in person in Panama and cannot be done in advance. A small racing boat (it only had 2 people onboard) may well also not be able to accommodate the required pilot and handlers onboard.
- jabl 4y ago
  Guess you could do the Suez canal. Per https://sea-distances.org/ https://sea-distances.org/ it seems the distance between Hong Kong and New York are about the same for either Suez or Panama. Not sure about the prevailing winds, which would be expected to be faster. If we count canals as cheating, another alternative is via the Cape of Good Hope. Seems it's about 3000 nm shorter than going via Cape Horn but again, much depends on the prevailing winds.
  - TylerE 4y ago
    Prevailing winds in the northern Atlantic are West to East. Even for powered ships the eastbound passage is measurably quicker.
  - yread 4y ago
    I remember reading a blog about traversing the Suez on a sailing yacht describing how you need to bribe everyone with cigarettes every step of the way
TylerE 4y ago
Few corrections since I can’t edit now there are replies: 1849 not 1847 74 days not 78 The trimaran actually beat the record by less than 2 days.
moffkalast 4y ago
Makes sense that it was called the Sea Witch, after all witches are also made of wood.
- zen_of_prog 4y ago
  I would think the weight would play a much greater role than the material. The Sea Witch would have to be pretty light, since a witch weighs the same as a duck.
  - girvo 4y ago
    I thought witches sink rather than float, though?
    - askvictor 4y ago
      Nah; that's how you tell they're witches. If they sink, they're not witches. If they float, they're witches and must be burned at the stake. Flawless logic.
      - fghorow 4y ago
        "Fair cop, then."
      - batch12 4y ago
        Well, that's messy. One could just use a duck to derive if they float and stay dry.
- the_third_wave 4y ago
  That, plus the fact that being a witch she'd weigh the same as a duck. Now imagine a wooden duck with a few thousand square metres of sail and you've got yourself a blazingly fast witch.
Someone 4y ago
> This was done with a full load of high value cargo (tea, porcelain, spices), which is what the clippers were built to carry. I can see demand for tea and spices to arrive fresher, but why porcelain? Wild guess: was that added mostly because a ship filled with tea and spices wasn’t heavy enough, and needed ballast?
- rdl 4y ago
  Cost of capital. If you have an expensive cargo load on sea for 80 days port to port, it's a lot cheaper to finance than for 120 or 150 days. Same reason we air-freight some cargo today, rather than sea, even if it's not perishable. Interest rates for this business were also higher than the risk-free rate, and rates were higher overall.
  - matthewmcg 4y ago
    Also if you’re first to market in a period of high demand, you can sell at higher prices than those that come later. See https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-great-tea-race-of-1866-8209465/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-great-tea-race-of... “But in the middle of the 19th century, demand for fresh tea was such that the first vessel home from Fuzhou or Shanghai could command a premium of at least 10 percent for her wares, and a clipper ship that cost perhaps £12,000 or £15,000 to build might bring home a cargo worth almost £3,000 on her first voyage.“
    - rdl 4y ago
      Yeah, it's like the Beaujolais Nouveau Day rush every year, shipping 8lb/gallon wine by air to get it faster :)
- TylerE 4y ago
  High value. Not per Shia or, but John value and rather subject to breakage (so the fewer days it spends at sea presumably the less breakage).
- jabl 4y ago
  One clever thing they did to prevent the porcelain from breaking was that they used tea for the packaging. Not sure what they generally used in those days as polystyrene foam wasn't available, maybe wood cuttings? But if they can use something that is itself valuable cargo like tea, why not!
ggm 4y ago
If you haven't read it, "the last grain race" by Eric Newby is a great read, of his time on the pre-ww2 era sailing vessel "moshulu" doing the Australia-Europe run with bagged wheat. He had a very interesting and varied life, this is only one lacuna in it. It made me get Henry Dana, Melville off the shelf too. And then dive into Aubrey/Maturin novels and N.A.M. Roger's history of the Georgian Navy.
- TylerE 4y ago
  I’ll add it to the list… but I’ve got like 40 naval books I haven’t read yet ;) Got a couple shelves of them. (And I already have NAM Rodgers books on the Royal Navy… assuming Georgian is an autocorrect.
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    It's a fascinating subject, precisely because the exercise of sailing was so highly developed (due to both the length of its history and functional importance) and then... effectively disappeared. The mind boggles imagining the number of crew they had on large ships, including up in the rigging, adjusting the boat in real time as a team. Even moreso, under battle conditions! I guess a cautionary tale for companies to be aware of the fundamental value their businesses are built on, should the world start to shift. Something was able to go faster... and freight sailing was no more.
    - ggm 4y ago
      It may come back in niche spaces. Semi-automated rigid sail wind power has been a nice idea for a while now. It doesn't suit short time-line supply chain dynamics but if your goods are capable of being delivered more slowly, it has lower TCO overall per weight carried, against a green economic outcome. If you don't care about CO, CO2 or fly-ash, its never going to win. A biassed but interesting source: https://reneweconomy.com.au/wind-powered-cargo-ships-are-the-future-debunking-four-myths-that-stand-in-their-way/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/wind-powered-cargo-ships-are-the... I had no idea Ariane was going to use it. Sweet!
  - 4y ago
nl 4y ago
The sailing clippers were fast and were sailed hard. The monohull sailing record for 24 hours was set in 1854 by "Champion of the Sea" at 467nm[1]. It wasn't broken by another monohull until 2003 by "Illbruck". The modern foiling (or at least foil stabalized) IMOCA 60 ft boats are up to 558nm[2] while foiling trimarans are up to 908nm (!) [1] https://www.sailspeedrecords.com/24-hour-distance https://www.sailspeedrecords.com/24-hour-distance [2] https://www.imoca.org/en/standings/records https://www.imoca.org/en/standings/records
- cycomanic 4y ago
  The reason why monohull records had not been broken in a long time is because speed is largely a measure of wet hull length (unless you're planing or on foils). Race sail boats are just much shorter than those old freight boats, so they really only started breaking records once they build such they could get consistently onto the plane or foils.
  - nl 4y ago
    Yes this is true and a great point, although it's mildly surprising that some of the maxis from the 1970's onwards weren't reliably planing. I had a quick look at race records, and even pretty formidable ones like Kialoa III's Sydney-Hobart records from 1975 that stood for 21 years was only 10 knots[1] (compared to over 20 for the clipper records) [1] https://rolexsydneyhobart.com/news/2005/pre-race/kialoa-s-race-record-remembered-30-years-later/ https://rolexsydneyhobart.com/news/2005/pre-race/kialoa-s-ra...
FpUser 4y ago
Interesting, I thought the fastest clipper was Cutty Sark
cafard 4y ago
Sailor Historian, a collection of essays by Samuel Eliot Morison, has a couple of pieces about the clipper ships, taken from his Maritime History of Massachusetts. I have not seen the latter book, but the first is very readable.

by TylerE 4y ago

Seanambers 4y ago

That's insanely impressive.

xboxnolifes 4y ago

Is this record for any sea path from Hong Kong to New York, or specifically the no Panama Canal path?

TylerE 4y ago
Probably a distinction without a difference in this case. The Canal really does not like sailboats, so it’s expensive, and can take upwards of a week to get all the measuring and certification done, which must be done in person in Panama and cannot be done in advance. A small racing boat (it only had 2 people onboard) may well also not be able to accommodate the required pilot and handlers onboard.
jabl 4y ago
Guess you could do the Suez canal. Per https://sea-distances.org/ https://sea-distances.org/ it seems the distance between Hong Kong and New York are about the same for either Suez or Panama. Not sure about the prevailing winds, which would be expected to be faster. If we count canals as cheating, another alternative is via the Cape of Good Hope. Seems it's about 3000 nm shorter than going via Cape Horn but again, much depends on the prevailing winds.
- TylerE 4y ago
  Prevailing winds in the northern Atlantic are West to East. Even for powered ships the eastbound passage is measurably quicker.
- yread 4y ago
  I remember reading a blog about traversing the Suez on a sailing yacht describing how you need to bribe everyone with cigarettes every step of the way

TylerE 4y ago

Few corrections since I can’t edit now there are replies: 1849 not 1847 74 days not 78 The trimaran actually beat the record by less than 2 days.

moffkalast 4y ago

Makes sense that it was called the Sea Witch, after all witches are also made of wood.

zen_of_prog 4y ago
I would think the weight would play a much greater role than the material. The Sea Witch would have to be pretty light, since a witch weighs the same as a duck.
- girvo 4y ago
  I thought witches sink rather than float, though?
  - askvictor 4y ago
    Nah; that's how you tell they're witches. If they sink, they're not witches. If they float, they're witches and must be burned at the stake. Flawless logic.
    - fghorow 4y ago
      "Fair cop, then."
    - batch12 4y ago
      Well, that's messy. One could just use a duck to derive if they float and stay dry.
the_third_wave 4y ago
That, plus the fact that being a witch she'd weigh the same as a duck. Now imagine a wooden duck with a few thousand square metres of sail and you've got yourself a blazingly fast witch.

Someone 4y ago

> This was done with a full load of high value cargo (tea, porcelain, spices), which is what the clippers were built to carry. I can see demand for tea and spices to arrive fresher, but why porcelain? Wild guess: was that added mostly because a ship filled with tea and spices wasn’t heavy enough, and needed ballast?

rdl 4y ago
Cost of capital. If you have an expensive cargo load on sea for 80 days port to port, it's a lot cheaper to finance than for 120 or 150 days. Same reason we air-freight some cargo today, rather than sea, even if it's not perishable. Interest rates for this business were also higher than the risk-free rate, and rates were higher overall.
- matthewmcg 4y ago
  Also if you’re first to market in a period of high demand, you can sell at higher prices than those that come later. See https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-great-tea-race-of-1866-8209465/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-great-tea-race-of... “But in the middle of the 19th century, demand for fresh tea was such that the first vessel home from Fuzhou or Shanghai could command a premium of at least 10 percent for her wares, and a clipper ship that cost perhaps £12,000 or £15,000 to build might bring home a cargo worth almost £3,000 on her first voyage.“
  - rdl 4y ago
    Yeah, it's like the Beaujolais Nouveau Day rush every year, shipping 8lb/gallon wine by air to get it faster :)
TylerE 4y ago
High value. Not per Shia or, but John value and rather subject to breakage (so the fewer days it spends at sea presumably the less breakage).
jabl 4y ago
One clever thing they did to prevent the porcelain from breaking was that they used tea for the packaging. Not sure what they generally used in those days as polystyrene foam wasn't available, maybe wood cuttings? But if they can use something that is itself valuable cargo like tea, why not!

ggm 4y ago

If you haven't read it, "the last grain race" by Eric Newby is a great read, of his time on the pre-ww2 era sailing vessel "moshulu" doing the Australia-Europe run with bagged wheat. He had a very interesting and varied life, this is only one lacuna in it. It made me get Henry Dana, Melville off the shelf too. And then dive into Aubrey/Maturin novels and N.A.M. Roger's history of the Georgian Navy.

TylerE 4y ago
I’ll add it to the list… but I’ve got like 40 naval books I haven’t read yet ;) Got a couple shelves of them. (And I already have NAM Rodgers books on the Royal Navy… assuming Georgian is an autocorrect.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  It's a fascinating subject, precisely because the exercise of sailing was so highly developed (due to both the length of its history and functional importance) and then... effectively disappeared. The mind boggles imagining the number of crew they had on large ships, including up in the rigging, adjusting the boat in real time as a team. Even moreso, under battle conditions! I guess a cautionary tale for companies to be aware of the fundamental value their businesses are built on, should the world start to shift. Something was able to go faster... and freight sailing was no more.
  - ggm 4y ago
    It may come back in niche spaces. Semi-automated rigid sail wind power has been a nice idea for a while now. It doesn't suit short time-line supply chain dynamics but if your goods are capable of being delivered more slowly, it has lower TCO overall per weight carried, against a green economic outcome. If you don't care about CO, CO2 or fly-ash, its never going to win. A biassed but interesting source: https://reneweconomy.com.au/wind-powered-cargo-ships-are-the-future-debunking-four-myths-that-stand-in-their-way/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/wind-powered-cargo-ships-are-the... I had no idea Ariane was going to use it. Sweet!
- 4y ago

nl 4y ago

The sailing clippers were fast and were sailed hard. The monohull sailing record for 24 hours was set in 1854 by "Champion of the Sea" at 467nm[1]. It wasn't broken by another monohull until 2003 by "Illbruck". The modern foiling (or at least foil stabalized) IMOCA 60 ft boats are up to 558nm[2] while foiling trimarans are up to 908nm (!) [1] https://www.sailspeedrecords.com/24-hour-distance https://www.sailspeedrecords.com/24-hour-distance [2] https://www.imoca.org/en/standings/records https://www.imoca.org/en/standings/records

cycomanic 4y ago
The reason why monohull records had not been broken in a long time is because speed is largely a measure of wet hull length (unless you're planing or on foils). Race sail boats are just much shorter than those old freight boats, so they really only started breaking records once they build such they could get consistently onto the plane or foils.
- nl 4y ago
  Yes this is true and a great point, although it's mildly surprising that some of the maxis from the 1970's onwards weren't reliably planing. I had a quick look at race records, and even pretty formidable ones like Kialoa III's Sydney-Hobart records from 1975 that stood for 21 years was only 10 knots[1] (compared to over 20 for the clipper records) [1] https://rolexsydneyhobart.com/news/2005/pre-race/kialoa-s-race-record-remembered-30-years-later/ https://rolexsydneyhobart.com/news/2005/pre-race/kialoa-s-ra...

FpUser 4y ago

Interesting, I thought the fastest clipper was Cutty Sark

cafard 4y ago

Sailor Historian, a collection of essays by Samuel Eliot Morison, has a couple of pieces about the clipper ships, taken from his Maritime History of Massachusetts. I have not seen the latter book, but the first is very readable.