"Thermopylae Leaving Foochow"

1. Print on Paper

Image Size:20 x30 inches (51 x76 cm) Paper size: 24 x 34 inches (66 x 90 cm)

2. Print on Canvas

Image size: 16 x 24 inches (40.5 x 61 cm)

Canvas prints have a 2" (5 cm) white border

This fine picture by Montague Dawson depicts the tea clipper Thermopylae leaving the Pagoda anchorage in Foochow, China.
Experts considered Thermopylae to have been the fastest sailing ship ever built, and its sleek green-hulled beauty was once the admiration of every seafarer. She was built at Walter Hood’s yard in Aberdeen in 1868 with a displacement of 1,970 tonnes at load draught and was constructed with an iron frame, wooden planking of elm from keel to topside and East India teak for her decks. Her biggest tea cargo carried from China to the London Docks was almost 1.5 million pounds of tea which, together with 250 tonnes of ballast, gave her a mean draught of 21ft 6ins.

Thermopylae moved out of the Pagoda anchorage at 5 a.m. on the morning of 3 July 1869. She was under tow carrying her first ever cargo of tea. After a voyage half-way around world, passing through the dangerous South China Sea and through the Sunda Strait, across the Indian Ocean and then round the Cape of Good Hope, Thermopylae arrived at London docks 91 days later.