Clipper

A clipper is a type of mid-nineteenth-century merchant sailing ship built for speed rather than cargo capacity, with a hull that was narrow and sharp for its length by the standards of the day and that carried an unusually large total area of sail. The design emerged in 1843 in response to demand for fast delivery of tea from China to Europe, and clippers went on to dominate the China tea trade, carry opium into China, race prospectors and goods to the California and Australian gold rushes, and carry emigrants to Australia, all trades where a premium was paid for speed. Clippers' commercial era was brief: the opening of the Panama Railroad in 1855 and the Suez Canal in 1869 shortened steamship routes enough that sailing ships built for speed alone lost their advantage, and by the late 1860s the type had gone into decline. Famous clippers raced one another on well-publicized voyages, and the type remains closely associated with the romance of nineteenth-century sail.