Robert Steele & Company
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Robert Steele & Company was a shipbuilding firm based in Greenock, Scotland. The business was formed in 1815 by Robert Steele and two sons. It followed the dissolution of an earlier shipbuilding partn
Robert Steele (1745-1830), an 1826 portrait by John B. Fleming (1792-1845), McLean Museum and Art Gallery.
View of Greenock, 1816, by Robert Salmon, (Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid)
Robert Steele II (1791-1879) portrait by Norman MacBeth, 1877 (Inverclyde Libraries, Museum and Inverclyde Archives)
Clipper ship Hesperus (1874).
Clipper
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A clipper was a type of mid-19th-century merchant sailing vessel, designed for speed. The term was also retrospectively applied to the Baltimore clipper, which originated in the late 18th century.
Robert Steele & Company
…compete with steam vessels. Among the firms achievements during this period was the construction of a number of tea-clippers. The company built twenty China tea clippers, the first of which was the Kate Carne in 1855. Many of these went on to win the China Tea Races. The first of these was made of wood but soon composite…
Taeping, a tea clipper built in 1863 by Robert Steele & Company.
Clipper barque Spirit of the Age 1854 by T. G. Dutton
Sovereign of the Seas set the record for world's fastest sailing ship in 1854.
Hornet – an American clipper ship of the 1850s