Barons of the Sea: And their Race to Build the World’s Fastest Clipper Ship Audiobook (Free)

“A fascinating, fast-paced background…full of remarkable character types and incredible tales” about the nineteenth-century American dynasties who battled for dominance of the tea and opium trades (Nathaniel Philbrick, National Book Award-winning writer of In the Heart of the Sea).

There was a period, back when america was young as well as the robber barons were just starting to come into their own, when fortunes were made and lost importing luxury goods from China. It had been a secretive, attractive, about Barons of the ocean: And their Competition to create the World’s Fastest Clipper Ship frequently brutal business—one where teas and silks and porcelain had been purchased with revenue in the opium trade. But the journey by sea to New York from Canton could take six agonizing months, and so the most pressing technological challenge of the day became making sure one’s goods showed up first to advertise, so they could fetch the highest price.

“With the verse of a natural dramatist” (The Christian Science Monitor), Steven Ujifusa tells the storyplot of a handful of cutthroat competitors who raced to develop the fastest, finest, most profitable clipper ships to carry their precious cargo to American shores. These were visionary, eccentric shipbuilders, debonair captains, and socially ambitious merchants with titles like Forbes and Delano—males whose business passions took them through the cloistered confines of China’s expatriate neighborhoods to the las vegas decadence of Silver Rush-era SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA, and from the teeming hubbub of East Boston’s shipyards and to the lavish sitting down areas of New York’s Hudson Valley estates.

Elegantly written and meticulously researched, Barons of the ocean is a riveting tale of innovation and ingenuity that “takes the reader on the rare and intoxicating journey back in time” (Candice Millard, bestselling writer of Hero from the Empire), drawing back again the curtain for the making of a number of the nation’s greatest fortunes, as well as the rise and fall of the all-American industry simply because sordid since it was genteel.