Sir Lancelot (clipper) - Voyages and Races

Voyages and Races

Captain Richard 'Dickie' Robinson of Workington was persuaded to leave the Fiery Cross to take charge of the new clipper. In a letter to naval historian Basil Lubbock, Sir Lancelot's owner John McCunn wrote; "Robinson was the best man I ever had in any ship and knew he got the best racing results out of Sir Lancelot".

In the Clipper Race of 1869, Robinson and Sir Lancelot established a new record between China and England. On the 85th day after leaving Fuzhou she passed The Lizard and on the 87th passed Dungeness. Thermopylae and Titania made passages of 91 days from Fuzhou and 98 days from Shanghai respectively in the same year.

Commander Dickie Robinson left Sir Lancelot because of his wife's sudden death. Under Captain Edmonds, Sir Lancelot went out to Hong Kong in 97 days and came home from Fuzhou in 104 days. But with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, races between the clippers lost their real significance and ships concentrated on passages to New York.

Captain Murdo Stewart MacDonald took command of the Sir Lancelot in 1882. It took sugar and rice from Mauritius to the Indian coast or the Gulfs and salt to Calcutta or Rangoon. It took six cargoes a year, when speed meant money, and when almost every passage saw the breaking of a record.

In 1886 Sir Lancelot was bought by the Parsee merchant Visram Ibrahim and C.W.Brebner took command. Captain Brebner survived four cyclones in Sir Lancelot before she was sold to Persian owners in 1895.

The Sir Lancelot was lost in the Bay of Bengal on 1 October 1895 during a cyclone near Sand Heads, Calcutta whilst on passage from the Red Sea with a cargo of salt bound for Calcutta.