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102 Museum AND-Art NOTES

Tea laden, Thermopylae sailed from the Chinese port on July 3 and docked at |
Gravesend October 2, 90 days out. Splendid passage as this was it was beaten by one |
day by the famous tea clipper, Sir Lancelot, which had sailed on July 17, arriving at |
London October 14.

Such was Thermopylae’s response to those who asked for all she had. She had
been well tried and not found wanting. With the exception of having to make west-
ing around Cape Horn, she had been tried out in most of the conditions attendant
on deep-water voyaging.

“We see her in a Channel breeze set every stitch of sail;
We see her tops’ls double-reefed before a Biscay gale.”

While Thermopylae never equalled her first passage out to the Colonies, in the
winter of 1870-71 she made the run from London to Melbourne in 65 days.

Some years later, when it was found that racing was not a paying proposition,
Thermopylae’s owners, though none were more liberal, found it necessary to reduce
operating expenses through reduced crews. So studding sails were discarded, masts
shortened and her single topgallant sails doubled...

And so for twenty years she sailed back and forth, “swift shuttle of an Empire’s
loom,” between London and Australian ports, making good passages until, with those
of her clipper sisters still left, she had to give way before an ever-increasing fleet of
steamers which followed like sharks seeking to fill their empty bellies. The Aberdeen
White Star Line, too, had to go into steam and were reluctantly compelled to dispose
of their most famous ship, so in 1889 she was sold, her buyer being Mr. Reford,
managing owner of rice mills in Montreal and Victoria, B.C.

Thermopylae’s first voyage under new ownership was from Cardiff to Singapore
with coal. It is reported that on this voyage she had two captains, but no details of
the voyage are available. When she eventually arrived at Victoria with a cargo of
rice for her new owners, Capt. Winchester was in command, he having joined the ship
in China. On discharge she was cut down to barque rig and her topmasts again
shortened by six feet. Here, too, she was placed under Canadian registry—port of
Victoria, B.C. The crew, which had numbered over 60 in her China tea days, had
been later cut down to 32. This number was again cut in half, the reason for her
change of rig being that fewer men would be required to handle her. Her color,
which had been the Aberdeen line’s standard bottle-green, with lower masts, yardarms,
figurehead, bowsprit and blocks in white, was changed to white also, so that her hull
was white from copper-sheathing to rail.

Under Capt. Winchester, a Nova Scotian, the old tea clipper in her new rig made
good passages across the North Pacific. Even with a reduced sail plan her speed does
not appear to have been much affected. Capt. Marshall of the C. P.R. liner Empress
of India said that Thermopylae once kept up with him for three days on the run
from Yokohama. The Empresses were then new 16-knot steamships, built on clipper
lines, while the sailing ship had a quarter of a century’s hard driving behind her,
stripped to barque rig and much shorter topmasts.

It must have been a glorious sight to see the gallant little ship, white-hulled and
white-winged, her sheathing flashing gold as she heeled to the strong, steady westerly,
holding level the graceful white-hulled liner, the last word in mechanical propulsion.