under reduced sail. There was no competition to arouse them until the
last barrier of the Navigation Laws was let down and they had to meet
the Yankee clipper with the tea trade as the huge stake.

Then at last it was farewell to the gallant old Indianian and her
ornate, dignified prestige. With a sigh the London Times confessed: "We
must run a race with our gigantic and unshackled rival. We must set our
long-practised skill, our steady industry, and our dogged determination
against his youth, ingenuity, and ardor. Let our shipbuilders and
employers take warning in time. There will always be an abundant supply
of vessels good enough and fast enough for short voyages. But we
want fast vessels for the long voyages which otherwise will fall into
American hands."

Before English merchants could prepare themselves for these new
conditions, the American clipper Oriental was loading in 1850 at Hong
Kong with tea for the London market. Because of her reputation for
speed, she received freightage of six pounds sterling per ton while
British ships rode at anchor with empty holds or were glad to sail at
three pounds ten per ton. Captain Theodore Palmer delivered his sixteen
hundred tons of tea in the West India Docks, London, after a crack
passage of ninety-one days which had never been equaled. His clipper
earned $48,000, or two-thirds of what it had cost to build her. Her
arrival in London created a profound impression. The port had seen
nothing like her for power and speed; her skysail yards soared far
above the other shipping; the cut of her snowy canvas was faultless; all
clumsy, needless tophamper had been done away with; and she appeared
to be the last word in design and construction, as lean and fine and
spirited as a race-horse in training.

This new competition dismayed British shipping until it could rally
and fight with similar weapons The technical journal, Naval Science,
acknowledged that the tea trade of the London markets had passed almost
out of the hands of the English ship-owner, and that British vessels,
well-manned and well-found, were known to lie for weeks in the harbor
of Foo-chow, waiting for a cargo and seeing American clippers come in,
load, and sail immediately with full cargoes at a higher freight than
they could command. Even the Government viewed the loss of trade with
concern and sent admiralty draftsmen to copy the lines of the Oriental
and Challenge while they were in drydock.

British clippe