Barons of the sea : and their race to build the world's fastest clipper ship

The Resource Barons of the sea : and their race to build the world's fastest clipper ship
Label
Barons of the sea : and their race to build the world's fastest clipper ship
Title remainder
and their race to build the world's fastest clipper ship
Statement of responsibility
Steven Ujifusa
Creator
Author
Subject
Genre
Language
eng
Summary
  • "There was a time, back when the United States was young and the robber barons were just starting to come into their own, when fortunes were made and lost importing luxury goods from China. It was a secretive, glamorous, often brutal business--one where teas and silks and porcelain were purchased with profits from the opium trade. But the journey by sea back home to New York could take six agonizing months, and so the most pressing technological challenge of the day became ensuring one's goods arrived first to market, so they might fetch the highest price--making their sellers some of the first millionaires. Barons of the Sea tells the story of a handful of cutthroat competitors who raced to build the fastest, finest, most profitable clipper ships to carry their precious cargo to American shores. They were visionary, eccentric shipbuilders, debonair captains, and socially ambitious merchants with names like Forbes and Delano--men whose business interests took them from the cloistered confines of China's expatriate communities to the sin-city decadence of Gold Rush-era San Francisco and from the teeming hubbub of East Boston's shipyards and to the lavish sitting rooms of New Yorks Hudson Valley estates. Elegantly written and meticulously researched, Barons of the Sea is a riveting tale of innovation and ingenuity that draws back the curtain on the making of some of the nation's greatest fortunes, and the rise and fall of an all-American industry as sordid as it was genteel"--Jacket
  • Back when the United States was young and the robber barons were just starting to come into their own, fortunes were made and lost importing luxury goods from China. Teas and silks and porcelain were purchased with profits from the opium trade. But the journey home to New York could take six agonizing months. The most pressing technological challenge of the day became ensuring one's goods arrived first to market, so they might fetch the highest price. Ujifusa tells of visionary, eccentric shipbuilders, debonair captains, and socially ambitious merchants and draws back the curtain on the making of some of the nation's greatest fortunes. -- adapted from jacket
Cataloging source
PUL
Illustrations
  • illustrations
  • plates
Index
index present
Literary form
non fiction
Nature of contents
bibliography

Context

Context of Barons of the sea : and their race to build the world's fastest clipper ship

Work of

Structured data from the Bibframe namespace is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License by Portland Public Library. Additional terms may apply to data associated with third party namespaces.