Opium Clipper

A fast, heavily-sparred sailing vessel built to run Indian opium to the China coast against the monsoon, active from the 1820s to the 1850s. Schooner and brig-rigged ships such as Red Rover (1829) and the later true clippers carried Patna and Malwa opium from Calcutta and Bombay to Lintin Island and the Pearl River, returning with silver. Their speed and weatherliness let them work year-round; the type fed directly into the design of the China tea clippers.