page_title: Clipper
section_title: Decline
hierarchical_section_title: Clipper / Decline
caption_attribution_description: English: 2,280 GRT passenger and cargo steamship Agamemnon, built in 1865 by Scotts of Greenock for Alfred Holt's Ocean Steam Ship Co, later known as the Blue Funnel Line. She was one of the Ocean Steam Ship Co's first ships, and a sister ship to the company's Ajax and Achilles. She was powered by tandem compound engines. Her bunkers could carry enough coal for the round trip between England and China, with enough space for a profitable amount of cargo. (Description supplied with photograph). Other sources explain that Agamemnon combined a high pressure boiler with an easily driven hull shape and a compound engine to give a fuel consumption of only 20 tons per day - substantially less than contemporary steamships. When steaming to China, she made one coaling stop at Mauritius on both the outward and return trip.
context_page_description: A clipper was a type of mid-19th-century merchant sailing vessel, designed for speed. Clippers were generally narrow for their length, small by later 19th century standards, could carry limited bulk freight, and had a large total sail area. "Clipper" does not refer to a specific sailplan; clippers, by sailplan, may be schooners, brigs, brigantines, etc., or indeed "ships" as restrictively defined in the Age of Sail. Clipper ships were mostly constructed in British and American shipyards, though France, Brazil, the Netherlands and other nations also produced some. Clippers sailed all over the world, primarily on the trade routes between the United Kingdom and China, in transatlantic trade, and on the New York-to-San Francisco route around Cape Horn during the California Gold Rush. Dutch clippers were built beginning in the 1850s for the tea trade and passenger service to Java.
  The boom years of the clipper ship era began in 1843 in response to a growing demand for faster delivery of tea from China. This continued under the stimulating influence of the discovery of gold in California and Australia in 1848 and 1851, and ended with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869.
context_section_description: The American clippers sailing from the East Coast to the California goldfields were working in a booming market. Freight rates were high everywhere in the first years of the 1850s. This started to fade in late 1853. The ports of California and Australia reported that they were overstocked with goods that had been shipped earlier in the year. This gave an accelerating fall in freight rates that was halted, however, by the start of the Crimean War in March 1854, as many ships were now being chartered by the French and British governments. The end of the Crimean War in April 1856 released all this capacity back on the world shipping markets - the result being a severe slump. The next year saw the Panic of 1857, which had effects on both sides of the Atlantic. The USA was just starting to recover from this in 1861 when the American Civil War started, causing significant disruption to trade in both Union and Confederate states.
  As the economic situation deteriorated in 1853, American shipowners either did not order new vessels, or specified an ordinary clipper or a medium clipper instead of an extreme clipper. No extreme clipper was launched in an American shipyard after the end of 1854 and only a few medium clippers after 1860. 
  By contrast, British trade recovered well at the end of the 1850s. Tea clippers had continued to be launched during the depressed years, apparently little affected by the economic downturn. The long-distance route to China was not realistically challenged by steamships in the early part of the 1860s. No true steamer (as opposed to an auxiliary steamship) had the fuel efficiency to carry sufficient cargo to make a profitable voyage. The auxiliary steamships struggled to make any profit.
  The situation changed in 1866 when the Alfred Holt-designed and owned SS Agamemnon made her first voyage to China. Holt had persuaded the Board of Trade to allow higher steam pressures in British merchant vessels. Running at 60 psi instead of the previously permitted 25 psi, and using an efficient compound engine, Agamemnon had the fuel efficiency to steam at 10 knots to China and back, with coaling stops at Mauritius on the outward and return legs - crucially carrying sufficient cargo to make a profit.  
  In 1869 the Suez Canal opened, giving steamships a route  about 3,000 NM shorter than that taken by sailing ships round the Cape of Good Hope. Despite initial conservatism by tea merchants, by 1871 tea clippers found strong competition from steamers in the tea ports of China. A typical passage time back to London for a steamer was 58 days, while the very fastest clippers could occasionally make the trip in less than 100 days; the average was 123 days in the 1867–68 tea season. The freight rate for a steamer in 1871 was roughly double that paid to a sailing vessel. Some clipper owners were severely caught out by this: several extreme clippers had been launched in 1869, including Cutty Sark, Norman Court and the Caliph.
caption: SS Agamemnon, the first steamer with the fuel efficiency to challenge sailing vessels on the long-distance route from Britain (or the East Coast USA) to the China tea ports
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