Erl King
Coordinates: 25 ° 25 ′ 31.4 " N , 80 ° 7 ′ 29.2" W.
.jpg) The Erl King
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The Erl King was a tea clipper that was built in the Pointhouse shipyard of A. & J. Inglis in Glasgow for Robertson & Co in London and completed in 1865. The three-masted barque had a steam engine as an auxiliary drive, which drove a ship's propeller when there was calm or a slight headwind . When sailing, the propeller could be raised to reduce water resistance. However, the engine power was not enough to overcome the high air resistance of the masts and rigging and generate propulsion in strong headwinds . The steam drive also had the advantage that from 1869 the ship could use the Suez Canal , which was opened that year , which was not possible for normal sailing ships.
The Erl King was used in China trade. She sailed regularly from England to China and mainly transported tea on the return voyage . The end of the British East India Company's monopoly on importing tea from China to Great Britain in 1834 had ushered in the tea clipper era , when fast sailing ships competed to be the first to bring the new harvest tea from China to Great Britain. This annual Tea race ( Tea Race ) aroused great public attention; Newspapers reported that bets were made and the fastest ship received a premium on the freight rate.
The year 1866, in which Erl King entered this lucrative market, went down in history as The Great Tea Race of 1866 because of the extremely tight outcome . The Erl King left the port of Fuzhou on June 5, 1866 with a cargo of 1,108,100 pounds (502 t) of tea . The first clippers left a week earlier. The Erl King , which was out of competition due to its steam engine, arrived in London on August 20, 1866 after a voyage of 77 days while the sailing ships were still sailing in the Atlantic. The fastest clippers arrived almost simultaneously on September 6th after 99 days at sea. The tea wholesalers, who had offered a bonus of ten shillings per ton for the victorious ship, made a loss - on the one hand because so many ships arrived almost at the same time, on the other hand because the tea from the new harvest brought by the Erl King has been on the market for more than a week.
In addition to her cargo, the Erl King also carried passengers. On the return voyage from China in 1866, the wife of Captain MacKinnon, the captain of the Taeping , one of the two clipper ships that shared first place in the tea race of that year, was on board . Presumably she did not travel on her husband's ship because she was pregnant. Four days after reaching Cape Verde , she gave birth to a boy on board.
The Erl King was lost after she ran aground on December 15, 1891 on the Long Reef off the Florida Keys . The wreck is still an obstacle to navigation for shipping today.
Footnotes
- ↑ a b Bruce Biddulph, David Asprey and Stuart Cameron: Shipping Times: Launched 1865 - SS Erl King.
- ↑ The last sailing race of the tea clippers ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed October 14, 2015.
- ^ "Launch", September 8, 1865, Glasgow Herald p. 4, column 7
- ↑ Arthur H. Clark: The Clipper Ship Era 1843-1869 . GP Putnam Sons, New York 1911.
- ^ A b David R. MacGregor: The Tea Clippers, Their History and Development 1833-1875 . Conway Maritime Press Limited, 1983, ISBN 0 85177 256 0 .
- ^ Adverts, January 6, 1871, Shefield Independent p. 1, column 5
- ^ "The Great Ocean Race from China", August 1, 1866, Glasgow Herald p. 4, column 4
- ^ "The Great Ocean Race from China, Arrival of the SS Erl King", August 24, 1866, Glasgow Herald p. 4, column 6
- ^ "The Great Ocean Race from China," Saturday 25 August 1866, Liverpool Daily Post , p. 5, column 1
- ^ SS Erl King († 1891) .
