The Clipper Races: an era of competition between cargo ships
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the British East India Company had the monopoly on trade with China and India. This meant that because no rival could legally import tea or other goods from these countries at this time, the company was rarely in a hurry to transport its merchandise. Instead, its priority was to minimise costs by carrying as much as possible on each ship. This meant that its ships – known as East Indiamen – were enormous, strong and very slow.
By 1800, the average East Indiaman could carry 1,200 tons of merchandise. The trading pattern for China tea usually meant the East Indiamen set sail from Britain in January, sailed round the Cape of Good Hope at the southernmost tip of Africa, and arrived in China in September. There they would load up that year's tea harvest, set off again and, depending on the wind and weather, aim to arrive back by the following September. So even with favourable sailing conditions, the round trip lasted almost two years, and if anything went wrong it could take a lot longer.
However, by 1834 the company had lost its trading monopolies, and tea had become a freely traded item. Having no more use for its great ships, the company sold them off, and many were bought by merchants or their captains, who continued to plough the seas between Britain and China. But now that tea could be traded freely, a few smart sailors began to realise that whoever brought each new harvest of tea to Britain first stood to make the most money.
This was partly because if you were home first, you could sell your shipment of tea before your competitors even arrived, and partly because consumers in Britain in the nineteenth century believed that the fresher and earlier-picked the tea, the better the resulting drink. Tea traders now needed faster, sleeker ships to bring their precious cargo back. Nevertheless, in Britain this idea only caught on slowly, and while the 1840s saw a few faster ships launched, for the time being many merchants remained satisfied with the slow but reliable East Indiamen.
In fact, it was the Americans who pioneered the first clipper ships. These vessels were fast and slender, with a narrow hull that was deeper at the back than at the front and masses of sails on tall masts. They earned their name from the way that they clipped off journey times. British merchants resolved to build their own clippers to rival the Americans and the first British tea clipper, Stornaway, was built in Aberdeen in 1850. More tea clippers were designed and built in Britain throughout the 1850s and 1860s; they had a narrower beam than their American equivalents, making them less powerful during storms, but faster in calmer weather.
There was a great spirit of competition between the British and American ships plying the tea trade, but to begin with the Americans had the edge. Then in 1851 a British ship owner, Richard Green, built the aptly named clipper Challenger, with the stated intention of beating the American ships. Loaded with tea, Challenger left China for London in 1852 at the same time as the American clipper Challenge, a much larger, older ship, already greatly admired for its speed. Large sums were bet on which would complete the journey first. In the event, the British ship beat its rival to London by two days, amid much jubilation. From then on, such international races grew in popularity.
After 1855, American participation in the British tea trade gradually stopped. But even without the Anglo-American rivalry, the competitive spirit continued. It was really ignited when new ports were opened up for trade in China. These included Fouchow, which was much closer to the tea-producing areas than Canton, the port used previously. As a result, tea could be loaded onboard earlier and fresher, and the clippers could set off in late May or early June – sometimes not even taking time to fill out the official paperwork – racing back to Britain whatever the difficulties.
They sped down through the South China Sea and into the Indian Ocean, then raced to get round the southernmost tip of Africa at the Cape of Good Hope. Then it was north across the vast Atlantic, past the Azores, through the English Channel and into the estuary of the River Thames. Once there, they would be towed by tugs, up the river and into the docks.
The cargo of the winning ship could earn a premium of up to sixpence per pound – and so the captain and crew were rewarded by the owners of the cargo. But the races were about more than just money: the crews, about 40 men on each clipper, were expert sailors, proud of their ships, and they delighted in competing against each other. Without their enthusiasm, the races would never have happened, since getting the ship home as fast as possible required the crew to be totally dedicated and to sacrifice much of their rest for the duration of the race.
Orientation of birds
A For many of us, the way birds are able to orientate is both astounding and difficult to appreciate fully. For instance, the annual migration of the golden plover of the Pacific takes it from Alaska to Hawaii on a flight of well over 3000 kilometres, and if it were to deviate by only one degree, it would miss the island on which it nests.
B The first systematic studies on orientation in birds were made possible by the ‘homing instinct’ exhibited by so many species. Birds are caught at a time when they show an attachment to their territory, especially during the nesting season. They are taken to some spot, released, and the percentage of returns is recorded. The distance can be varied, and the direction, as well as the method of transporting them, and then the influence of climatic and other factors on their ability to find their way home can be studied. These experiments have shown a wide variation in ability to home, and three types of homing behaviour have been identified.
C In the first type, birds methodically explore the area in which they are released until they pick up some familiar feature, and then they quickly find their way back to the nest. Such birds possess a highly developed visual memory, as experiments with pigeons have shown. Domestic pigeons have been trained to peck at a certain point on an aerial photograph, with a system of rewards, and four years later the birds were still able to respond to this training when placed on the aerial photograph. Birds’ eyes have a power of resolution two to three times greater than ours, enabling them to pick up very fine details. If a bird uses only this type of homing behaviour, however, it can only succeed if the point of release is not too far away. If the birds are transported 800 kilometres from their nest, it is only by good fortune that they find their way back as a result of long exploratory flights. Usually, the area known to a bird is its feeding territory. Released within this area, the birds soon make their return; release them outside it and far fewer return. However, if a bird is released for a second time in the same place, its visual memory comes into play, and the bird, no longer requiring tedious exploratory flights, will return much more quickly.
D The second type of homing behaviour is shown by birds that are capable of choosing their flight direction and holding to it for the rest of their journey. How do they decide what direction to take? They appear to choose their normal migration direction even if they are released in a different place from their usual starting point. If, for example, birds which normally fly to the north-east to reach latitude 45 degrees north are released at that latitude, they will immediately start flying north-east anyway. So if they’re released further to the west, they maintain the correct direction, but fly west of their destination, and so fail to arrive.
E The third type of homing behaviour shows the highest degree of orientation. Released at one point, the birds immediately take stock of it, compare its position with that of the nest, decide on the direction and fly off. This happens even if the birds are in a country right off their migration routes, where they have never been before. In one example, a Laysan albatross returned to its nesting area on Midway Island in the middle of the Pacific, having flown over 5000 kilometres from the west coast of the USA in just over ten days. This is a perfect example of the third type of homing, for the albatross clearly couldn't rely on any landmarks over the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean.
F The percentage of successful birds varies greatly, being highest in those species with a strong migratory behaviour. Thus the lesser black-backed gull is more migratory than the herring gull and more often reaches ‘home’. Great migrants such as the swift have the highest percentage of returns. In one case, seven out of nine alpine swifts were recaptured at their nests after being displaced some 1400 kilometres; one made the journey in three days.
G What part does heredity play in all this? Two research studies suggest that instinctive, i.e. genetically inherited, behaviour patterns play a part in navigation. The first was carried out by Ernst Schüz and it is highly significant. Schüz caught first-year European storks and released them later, after the departure of the adult storks at a time when they normally make their south-west autumn migration to Africa. The recaptures showed that, in spite of the fact that there were no adults to guide them, the birds unanimously headed south-west. This was a most striking finding, for it showed that the birds had an innate and unlearned attraction for the African wintering area that they have occupied for thousands of years.
H The case of starlings is a little different. These birds have a great aptitude for homing, but this behaviour differs in the different age groups. Birds that were shifted to the south-east of their normal migration route split into two lots. The adults, in full possession of their gift for orientation, found their wintering area by modifying their direction by 90 degrees, whereas the juveniles sought their winter quarters to the south-east of their real position.
A new stage in the study and teaching of history
For hundreds of years, historians have relied on written or printed documents to provide the bulk of their source materials, and they have largely communicated with students and the wider public by writing books and journal articles. Today, however, the printed word is being superseded by a diversity of forms of communication, above all moving images on video or film.
A The development of this new form of communication is leading to a growing gap between the practice of professional historians based in academia, and the practice of those aiming to popularise the study of history among the general public, and to encourage people to create their own records for the future. On the one hand, there are mainstream academics who continue to use only the written word as they examine more and more fields with an ever-increasing number of sophisticated methodologies. On the other hand, film and video, especially as broadcast on television, are probably the major influence on the public's consciousness of history, as they see film of events of fifty or a hundred years ago, events they had previously only read about.
B In a related development, a great many people now document local and family events in the form of videos; many schools, too, produce video yearbooks. All these visual records may well prove to be invaluable sources of information for future historians. The glaring contradiction is that the two approaches – the academic and what we might term the popular – have intersected very little: with a few notable exceptions, professional historians have tended to avoid involvement in television programmes about history, and have even less impact on what is being captured and preserved on video. And the potential of moving images has wielded negligible influence on the academic study of history.
C This gulf can be seen as resulting from the willingness or otherwise of individual historians to accept the validity of new forms of communication in the study of history. This is not the first time that the question has arisen. The study of history, as conceived of today, began with the transition from oral to literate culture, leading to the earliest written records and the earliest historical studies. The next great shift came with the advent of printing, which transformed everything. Today, as the printed word loses its dominance, historians are faced with a variety of forms of communication, ranging from simple audiotape to the promising complexities of videodiscs linked with computers. As yet, however, the use of moving images to record current events for the benefit of future historians does not even have a commonly agreed name.
D This does not mean that mainstream historians have totally rejected the use of moving images as sources: the majority seem intrigued by the idea, and valuable research has been carried out into the history and analysis of films with a broad circulation, using them as a source of information on the social and intellectual history of the twentieth century. Journals such as American History Review have played a significant role in this field.
E Yet the number of historians using moving images in their research or teaching is very small. The barrier seems to be that the profession is structured around the medium of the written word, and is somewhat insulated in its academic setting. The use of moving images presents a substantial challenge to this setting and its assumptions. As a result, historians have rejected the training, the institutions, the motivations and the professional structures that would be needed in order to use moving images effectively. Above all, they have rejected the necessity to learn complicated new skills.
F So why should historians make this change? Clearly, films or videos of events and people can be used as solid evidence of the past, linked to the words of the narrator (whether a television presenter/historian or a university teacher giving a lecture) but carrying information in their own right. Film has reintroduced the oral form as a mode of research and communication for documenting historical events. Now, with moving images, people are reminded that oral communication is not limited to words: it also includes body language, expression and tone, and is embedded in a context. Little of this is evident in a written transcript. A further effect of video and film is that the narrator gives up some control and has less need to give explanations, while the viewer becomes involved in the process of interpreting and understanding history.
G Film or videotape can also aid historians by simplifying the work of the interviewer. Instead of trying to carry on an interview while simultaneously making notes about setting and other unspoken data, this new kind of historian can concentrate on the interview itself, and study the film later. Many benefits of using moving images as historical evidence easily outweigh worries about cost, technical skills, or the effect of a camera on a person telling his or her story. Moving images enhance the quality of historical research, and suggest new directions for historians to explore.