Lot Essay
The wooden-hulled, iron-beamed Min was built for Captain Alexander Rodger by Robert Steele at Greenock in 1861. One of three Steele clippers launched that year, Min was registered at 629 tons and measured 174½ feet in length, but was not so successful a design as the yard's famous Falcon of 1859. Never a record-breaker, she was nevertheless reliable and, despite a collision at Hankow in 1866, served Rodger well until he sold her to Ewing & Co. of Glasgow in 1877. Thereafter put onto other Far East routes, she was resold to Picken's, also of Glasgow, in 1884 and then again to Honolulu owners four years later. Renamed W.B. Godfrey, she was still with them when, on 9 March 1891, she was wrecked near Lorne, Australia, whilst on passage from San Francisco to Melbourne.