Helena (packet sailboat)
packet ship launched in 1841
Helena was a China packet built by William H. Webb in 1841. Helena is often called a "pre-clipper" or "early clipper ship", type of the fast ships that were a precursor to the fast clippers that dominated the China trade routes for years to follow.
History
Helena was owned by N. L. and G. Griswold and sailed in the China trade under the command of Captain Deliverance P. Benjamin.
Passages
In 1841, Helena commanded by Captain Deliverance P. Benjamin made an 83-day passage from New York to Valparaíso, Chile in 83 days. Helena made two long stop in Chile and then in Lima, Peru, before sailing to China. She docked at Macao on June 15, 1842 after 68 at sea. She rested in Macao until September 2, 1842, when she sailed to New York in less than 106 days, arriving there on December 21, 1842.
In 1843, Helena made a record by sailing from ValpaValparaísoraiso to Canton, China in 51 days. She returned to New York the following year from Canton in 90 days.
In 1846, Helena sailed from New York to Java in just 73 days and 20 hours, averaging 183 miles a day.
“Helena (packet sailboat)” enters the record as packet ship launched in 1841. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Helena, packet and sailboat can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q63258995. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1841, 1842, 1843 and 1846.
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This entry incorporates text from “Helena (packet sailboat)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.