Mencius

Official Number 1951

The Mencius was a tea clipper built at the Bath shipyard at Douglas, Isle of Man, in 1848. She made a 118 day passage from Liverpool to Shanghai in 1848/9, beating the iron clipper Panic by 18 days, claimed a Manx newspaper.

In Lloyds Register 1850 the ship owner was named as Aitkin & Co. of Liverpool (who owned the Bath shipyard) and the master was named as Robertson.

In the 1857 Mercantile Navy List Official Notices (page 269) the master of the Mencius, Capt. William Quirk, is commended for his "excellent" meteorological observations - the vessel owner is named as Atkin & Co.
 

Name	Year Built	Gross Tons	Length (feet)	Breadth (feet)	Depth (feet)	Masts	Figurehead	Stern	Lloyd's Classn.
Mencius	1848	463				3			13A1

Sources :

1. Manx Sun, 6th June 1849, quoting from a letter received from Shanghai.
2. The Ashburner Schooners, ISBN 0-95-16792-0-1
3. 1857 Mercantile Navy List gives port of registry as Liverpool, official number and signal letters HMDB, tonnage 509.