Talk:Great Tea Race of 1866

Contradictory Info
The article states a bonus of one pound per ton. The newspaper quote states a bonus of 10 shillings per ton. 20 shillings = 1 pound. QED. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.215.196.53 (talk) 06:05, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

IIRC it's exactly right. With the tea prices dropping and news of both ships going head to head the shipowners struck the deal that both ships will receive half the prize, regardless witch one wins, thus costing the loosing company, but cutting the winning ships owners expenses half. While the awards were payed according to the deal, it still caused the scandal in the day. I can't source this info right now so i'm not going to put it in the article though 178.36.176.86 (talk) 23:38, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Also contradicting ist the information in the source with a two minutes lead while the next section states that the lead was 20 minutes. --Matthiasb (talk) 10:03, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

book 'plachetnice vsetkych cias' (sailers of all times), stefan gulas & dusan lescinsky (publisher mlade leta, 1979, page 196) writes about final 9.45, 10.15 and 11.30 Tblazko (talk) 21:23, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

Cargo figures
According to the last line of the article, "The Taeping was carrying 767 tons and 1,108,709 pounds of tea." What do these figures actually mean? 1,108,709 pounds (weight) is just short of 495 tons, so was the ship carrying 1262 tons of tea? Or was it carrying 495 tons of tea and 767 tons of other cargo? On the other hand, if the number is meant to be the value of the tea, that works out at 12/10 per pound, which seems _very_ expensive for 1866. Does this statement have a source? Tevildo (talk) 13:32, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

The "767 tons" is the Taeping's "registered tonnage". This is essentially a notional measurement of the volume available to carry cargo and was used for taxation and harbour dues etc. As a rule of thumb, one ton is 100 cubic feet. The word "ton" in this context comes from the wine cask called a "tun" and goes back to medieval times when a large proportion of the cargoes moved by ships was wine. The cargo of tea is correctly stated (as can be confirmed from numerous newspaper articles of the time). ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 21:51, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

Rewrite Needed?
A lot of this article is wrong, incomplete or misleading. It really needs a complete rewrite. I'd have a go at it myself - but I'm sitting here with my arm in a sling right now - hate typing one handed. There's loads of inf in the BNA and this article completely ignores the authority on Tea Clippers, David R MacGregor's The Tea Clippers, their History and Development 1833-1875. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 11:05, 16 March 2014 (UTC) (sorry if this sounds a bit grumpy.)


 * I see a few problems so will list them here.
 * There are too many primary sources and too much quoting of sources, that should be fixed.
 * Lead needs to be conformed to WP:LEAD
 * First sentence should describe race and list winner.
 * First paragraph should describe all participants.
 * Is this a race against the clock or a physical race?.
 * The root of the "argument over who really was the winner" should be explained. this source says Ariel arrived off Deal first but Taeping got a faster tug.
 * Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 15:58, 12 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Noted - I hope to avoid these in the rewrite.
 * I'm guessing you classify news reports of the time as primary sources - I have some problem with making this interpretation of No original research's discussion of primary sources - though I can easily point to several instances when newspaper reports are wrong - in this case many state the "premium" paid to the winner as £1 per ton when actually it was 10s. I do think that some newspaper material can be used to illustrate a point, rather than as a source itself - again for this article, that would be the mention of ship's names in adverts for tea sold (so an illustrative reference to such an advert).
 * Thanks for pointer to the lead style guide.
 * Difficult to be concise over who won, as that is one of the major topics about the whole race - but point taken.
 * "All participants" is pretty open ended - especially since a slightly cynical observer might say the whole race was a marketing exercise by the tea merchants and they fixed the result by loading the fastest ship first. Draft rewrite has a historical background para first, then "the contenders", being the first 5 ships to sail out of a possible 16. The whole tea season had in excess of 50 ships sailing.
 * It's a physical race - first ship to dock in the tea season concerned. Fast passages were also commented on, but the "premium" was only won by the first ship to dock (except in 1866, when the captains and owners reached a compromise and split it between the two dead heat ships).
 * The argument over who won should be a good part of the article - it is a major noteworthy element of the story. However, the "rules", in so much as they existed, were written into the bill of lading for each participating ship and clearly stated "the first ship to dock". This is found in MacGregor, David R. (1983). The Tea Clippers, Their History and Development 1833-1875. Conway Maritime Press Limited. ISBN 0 85177 256 0 and  Lubbock, Basil (1919 reprinted 1981). The China Clippers. Glasgow: Brown, Son and Ferguson Ltd. ISBN 0 85174 109 6 - and I am fairly sure it is also in Andrew Shewan's book as well, though I can't find that right now (his index is a bit chaotic). Oh, and facts about who got the best tug affect both ends of the voyage - Ariel came off worse both times and it cost her a day in China.
 * What is very noteworthy is that this is the year when two steamers also took cargoes of tea from China - the Erl King sailed about a week after the first clippers and arrived a clear week before them in London. The Agamemnon was substantially more fuel efficient than other steamers of the time and with her sister ships and the opening of the Suez Canal, was the beginning of the end for Tea Clippers. And the tea brokers lost money on the premium because of the Erl King, so it was not offered after 1866.
 * The big problem of the rewrite is to try and keep an encyclopedic tone whilst not shutting out the sense of excitement and romance engendered by great sailing ships being raced half way around the world by highly skilled crews - or, even worse, injecting a dismal tone by explaining why the clipper era was ended by fuel-efficient steamships. The "romance" is, after all, one of the notable features of the whole story. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 20:21, 12 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Thats allot of typing, watch the arm ;). It all points to quite a bit of a rewrite and I probably wont add much more to the talk page since Wikipedia policy and guidelines are pretty clear. My questions on the article point out the problem that the article does not explain the topic very well. I would say the second and third paragraph in the lead should be moved down to the to a first section "Overview". Lead needs to be rewritten to summarize the article. What you mention above should be added with sources. The section that is just a newspaper quote should be replaced with descriptive prose with citations. I would not inject to much "romance" into the article (and maybe remove some since a section title "Surprise finish" is a bit POV), Wikipedia requests a businesslike writing style. Per talk at Talk:Telegraphy we cannot infer how the communications on the race were sent from newspaper reports because that falls outside Wikipedia. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 16:20, 13 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Rewrite now in place.ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 10:01, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Contested deletion Category talk:Yachting races
You should know about this and comment. One of our editors has systematically depopulated it (perhaps from this article among many others), and thinks that is a good reason to delete it. 13:34, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Main picture Great Tea Race of 1866 (copied here from user's talk page)
Noting the use of the relatively modern picture by Jack Spurling versus the unattributed but contemporaneous picture originating from Andrew Shewan's book, I was wondering how one might score the significance of each for the article. Spurling, though a qualified merchant maritime officer, with sea experience on a sailing ship, was born after the event described in the article. The picture from Shewan's book appears to be of the "pier-head artist" type. Whilst neither is painted from the actual event, the older picture may well be based on actual accounts of the spectacle of the race. It is also less romantic, perhaps emphasising that this was a commercial event, not some enormous yacht race. Another measure: which relies most on imagination?

Obviously a judgement call - but I just thought I would bounce the idea off you.

ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 21:53, 10 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Hello, and thanks for the note. I hope my other additions to your excellent work are acceptable.
 * There is another famous painting of the two clippers racing up the Channel; it is Ariel and Taeping by Montague Dawson.  It is not in the public domain, but prints are readily available on the internet.  My understanding (which may be flawed memory, as I cannot now find it in any of my books) is that the ships, while in the open sea with all sails set, were often in sight of each other, but not as close as shown in the Dawson painting and the drawing from the Shewan book.  Also, Ariel's 5 September 1866 log, when the ships were in the Channel, states "royal stunsails and all flying kites set", and the Shewan drawing does not appear to show this array of sail.  So the Spurling painting, while undoubtedly romantic, may be a better representation of the race up the Channel.  But I won't object if you wish to use the image from the Shewan book. Regards, Kablammo (talk) 01:37, 11 May 2016 (UTC)


 * I certainly wouldn't want to claim any ownership of the article!! Further research on Spurling reveals that he once offered a large cash prize to anyone who could find an inaccurate detail of rigging in any one of his paintings (which no-one ever successfully claimed) - so his work has obvious value. The older picture adds a flavour of the interest at the time (it might have appeared in one of the pictorial newspapers of the era, though I have not spotted it in one) - but I would be the first to acknowledge that I spend far to much time reading old newspapers. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 08:32, 11 May 2016 (UTC)


 * , do you have any objection to moving this discussion to the article talk page? Kablammo (talk) 15:46, 12 May 2016 (UTC)


 * No problem for me - though the technical aspects may take me a bit of thought - so if you can do the necessary that would be fine. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 20:28, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Pinyin versus other romanization systems
Copied from User talk:SilverStar54:

"I have reverted your edits on Great Tea Race of 1866. This is because the article is about a historic event. All the sources use the old names. Any reader wishing to check the content with the sources (WP:V) then finds that all the placenames are different. I note that you are making large numbers of these changes. The vast majority of these articles are also on historic events. The correct change, if one is needed, would be to link the first occurrence of the old name with the article with the new name. Then the reader can find out what is meant, but still see what was originally written in the source. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 00:09, 16 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I understand that articles on historical events often do (and should) use the historical names in use at the time in question. There are many Chinese cities whose names have changed over the years (e.g., Niuzhuang) and others that have well-accepted alternate names that originate from non-Mandarin Chinese langauges (e.g., Canton and Amoy). In these cases, I agree wholeheartedly with your suggestion. As long as the modern, official name is given alongside the historical/alternate name, Wikipedia articles are free to use whichever one that a consensus of editors feels is more appropriate. If you check my recent edits, I've left most uses of "Canton" and "Amoy" as they are, and changed "Newchwang" to "Niuzhuang", not "Yingkou". I have been changing "Chefoo" to "Yantai" (i.e., the whole city, rather than "Zhifu", the district of Yantai that was romanized into Chefoo), but in most cases when English sources said "Chefoo", they meant the whole city, not just the titular district.
 * However, obsolete romanizations are not the same thing as historical names. The name of this city obviously isn't actually "Fuzhou", and it was certainly never "Foochow", it was always "福州市". "Fuzhou" and "Foochow" are both just ways of romanizing the same name, the former of which is the only widely-accepted way of doing so in modern writing. A large (and growing) majority of historians use pinyin for historical places, even if their English sources don't/didn't (one example, another, another, another, another, and another). Wikipedia editors share this consensus, and Wade-Giles/postal romanization are only considered acceptable under extraordinary circumstances. These exceptions include things like the official names of ships, if they had an official romanized name, and individuals (like Sun Yat-sen) who are exceptionally famous in the English-speaking world under the obsolete romanization of their names. But they don't include cities and people in articles that happen to be about a time period when English sources used older forms of romanization. If we did that, articles on 19th-century Chinese history would be in chaos, since even Wade-Giles and postal romanization were still evolving. Honestly, the contemporary romanizations don't even need to be referenced unless there's a good reason (for example, to explain why a school in Fuzhou is called the "Foochow Normal School" or help the reader parse a quote from an English primary source).
 * I'm going to copy this discussion to the talk page on the article so that others can see/participate, but hopefully you understand why I'm making these edits. Unless you have a further objection, I'm going to reinstate my edits; Wikipedia's policy on this is pretty clear. SilverStar54 (talk) 03:15, 16 January 2023 (UTC)"
 * Again, I plan to wait a week to give @ThoughtIdRetired and anyone else a chance to continue this discussion before reinstating my edits to this page. SilverStar54 (talk) 03:41, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

, do you have any objection to me making revisions based on the conversation that was had over Wikiproject History? SilverStar54 (talk) 22:50, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I have had to step back from much Wikipedia activity recently as I am seriously busy in the real world. I appreciate you asking the question, but I have little time to re-read the discussion you reference. As long as the reader of this article can relate the place names here with those that are found in older accounts (particularly contemporary newspaper reports), then there is no problem. (Many of the authoritative sources use the older names, too – and some of them are so complete that there is little scope for a more modern author to supplant them with a newer book.) At some point the article has to connect the names that were used at the time with those now in use - it is all about how that is done for maximum readability. I think my shortage of editing time means that I must leave that to you and others in the meantime. Cheers, ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 20:52, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Understood. I think that in that case, the compromise we discussed is probably appropriate: change the names to pinyin but include a parenthetical with the older spelling for the first mention. I hope you have time to come back to editing soon! SilverStar54 (talk) 17:53, 8 April 2023 (UTC)