Lot Essay
The China clipper Harlaw, 894 tons, was built by Walter Hood for George Thompson's White Star Line of Aberdeen 1866. A fine-lined vessel measuring 194 feet in length with a 34 foot beam, she was an above average sailer and her best passage was a very fast 87 days, pilot to pilot, Shanghai to New York, in 1870. Equally good was her 1871 run from Foochow to London in 112 days but as the tea trade increasingly went over to steam, voyages became less profitable and she made her last China to America voyage in 1875-76. Thereafter, like so many other great clippers, her owners put her to work on their Australian service where she survived only two years before being wrecked on the Tung Sha Banks, at the south entrance to the Yangtze River, on 31 July 1878 outward bound from Sydney with 1100 tons of coal.