Henry Scott R.S.A.

The Leander was designed by Bernard Weymouth, the well-known naval architect and the secretary of Lloyd’s Register, and was built in 1867 by Lawrie of Glasgow, a competitor to Robert Steele, who dominated the shipbuilding industry.  She was built for the famous firm of Joseph Sommes.  In design, the Leander was state-of-the-art, and should have made a great reputation as an exceedingly fast ship. But she was unfortunate in having a captain much too fond of his grog.  During one of his carefree periods, the captain allowed his ship to remain in the Foochow port far longer than the other ships. To make up for lost time, the dare-devil captain attempted to take his clipper through a shortcut channel in the river, very narrow and rock-strewn; one of which he struck. It was only luck that prevented the ship from being destroyed. She was patched in time to load in Shanghai, though not in time to race from Foochow with the other cracks.

Of notable ships in the tea fleet, Leander was still under the British flag in the nineties, owned at this time by R. Anderson of London. After being damaged by two cyclones in 1892 she was sold, and was lost at sea after foundering in a cyclone, bound from Muscat to Calcutta with a cargo of salt.