Rosetta Stone Chinese v4 TOTALe - Level 1, 2 & 3 Set - Windows/Macintosh
The Way of a Ship: A Square Rigger Voyage in the Last Days of Sail
° Amoy ° Bejing ° Guangzhou ° Fuzhou, Pagoda Island
° Canton ° Hong Kong ° Macau ° Shanghai
° Tientsin ° Yangzhou
Fifteen minutes east of Fuzhou lies Mawei, cradle of Chinese seamanship, and site of the famous Pagoda Anchorage. Chinese named the giant rocks, “Double Turtle Guarding the Door,” “Five Tigers Defending the Gate,” and “Warriors Leg.” Sailors from Fuzhou were trading overseas before most of China knew that seas existed . . . and the city was an international trading port by the year 618 AD.
After opening the Canton consulate in July 1843, George Tradescant Lay arrived in Fuzhou in July 1844. He was forced off his ship at Pagoda Island and made to go up river in a small boat. Fuzhou authorities allocated him a house built of boards, over the river, which flooded twice a day.
Between Pagoda Anchorage and the sea, the Min surged through a narrow gorge that was so tight that old salts claimed monkeys jumping from one side to the other got their tails caught in the rigging. These were tall tales but many a ship, like the Oriental in 1853 and the Vision in 1857, sank in the mighty Min. No one took the Min for granted—especially the Chinese, who were the greatest ocean-going adventurers of the ancient world.
In 1859, Sea Serpent's loaded for tea at Pagoda Isalnd . . . her time from crossing the bar of the Min River to London was only 130 days—during the height of the adverse monsoon. She beat all the clippers who anchored alongside her.
In 1866, Foochow became the starting point of the Great Tea Race . . . 16 clippers were loaded tea at the Pagoda Anchorage. In late May and early June, they began their race across 16,000 miles of open ocean to the London Docks, arriving 99 days later. The Taeping reached Gravesend first, followed by the Ariel and the Serica.
1869: There are few scenes that linger in my memory more vividly than the Pagoda Anchorage in Foochow River a day or two after the "new teas" market had opened, when the first flight of clippers was getting ready for sea.
The "opening of the market" was a feature peculiar to the Foochow tea trade. In the city of Foochow, stocks of the first pickings from the teagardens in the interior had accumulated since early in May, but the Chinese merchants were slow in making up their minds to sell at prices acceptable to foreign buyers.
It was perhaps known from the outset that certain foreign "hongs"—that is, mercantile houses—would eventually purchase particular "chops" of tea. A "chop" was a number of boxes of the same make and quality of leaf, variable as to weight, but usually the product of one paricular garden. "Chops" bearing a well-known name were bought year after year by the same foreign merchants, yet, even so, weeks were often spent in haggling. The price was slowly and reluctantly lowered by the Chinese merchant . . . When it had been reduced sufficiently, some of the more important firms was tempted to close, and "opened the market." Then the hurry began.
As soon as it became known that Jardine's or some other well-known English firm had opened the market, all the merchants began to buy their favourite "chops" at proportionate prices.
Speed was the order of the day. Forty-eight hours or so were required to weight and label the tea-chests, then each "hong" made all haste to load the same into the lighters which waited to convey the fragrant leaf for Foochow to the Pagoda Anchorage, a distance of about twelve miles . . .
Generally some three or four clippers with good records were chosen as "going shipos," and combinations of shippers would concentrate on filling these . . . it was a keen contest; yet it was not always the ship considered the fastest which got away first. Much depended on the tonnage of the vessel and the status and influence of the agents concerned . . .
It would usually happen that a dozen or more clippers would be lying ready, with holds swept and garnished, for two or three weeks perhaps . . . then one day, or one night as likely as not, immediately after the opening of the market, the watchmen on teh waiting ships would be kept on the qui vive by hearing the blowing of many conch shells and a distant din on the river . . . as the first "tea chops" came down. The men on board the vessels kept up insistent sing-song calls, which represented, in teh Chinese tongue, inquiries as to where they should anchor to be near the particular vessel for which their cargo was designed.
The method in vogue was to chant in a long drawn-out wail the Chinese name of the "hong" which owned the tea. Thus Jardine Mathieson's employees would wail out: "Ee-wo! Ee-wo!"; those in Turner and Company would snap back a discordant "Wha-kee! Wha-kee!" . . .
The finest display of clippers that I ever remember seeing waiting for the market to open was in 1869. In that year, no less than fifteen of these beauties, more like yachts than merchantmen, lay moored off the Pagoda, with holds ready, ballast levelled, ground chop stowed, waiting for the new teas. I do not suppose that in any port in the world one could have seen such a fleet of beautiful craft as were assembled in the River Min on that occasion.
Among them were the Thermopyle, Leander, Windhover and Kaisow, all on their first trip; the Spindrift and Lahloo on their second; the proved and noted flyers Sir Lancelot, Ariel, Taeping, and Serica; as well as the somewhat older but still handsome vessels Black Prince, Falcon, Min, Flying Spur and little Ziba. . .
Thus it went at Foochow, and Foochow in the sixties was the premier port for the shipment of teas. Though it had been opened to foreign trade as far back as 1842, for a number of years afterwards Canton, or rather Whampoa, was the more important place. "Orange" and "Flowery Pekoe," "Scented Capers" and other choice teas were those for which the southern port was famous.
Andrew Shewan
The Great Days of Sail
Part of the trials and tribulations of these ports were pirates . . . each year several cases of piracy, either attempted or accomplished . . . were recorded. There were thieves among the seafaring population all along the China coast, but reportedly none were as bloodthirsty as the Cantonese and their neighbors.
By 1871 the newer steamships began to replace these great ships. Tea Clippers were vital to the tea trade until the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 and were in operation until the end of the 1880's.
