Further, her cargo carrying capacity was two or three times as much as these sailing ships. Maiden voyage The newly built Agamemnon arrived in Liverpool, her home port, from Greenock on 1 April 1866, the year of the clippers' Great Tea Race. She sailed for China on 19 April. Her outward passage was the quickest recorded to date, reaching Mauritius in 40 days and Singapore in 60. The whole journey from Liverpool to Hong Kong took 65 days. This beat the fastest tea clipper outward passage of 77 days by the Cairngorm in 1853. Later voyages The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 guaranteed the success of Agamemnon and her sister ships by shortening the route that a steamship could take from Europe to China whilst sailing vessels still had to travel via the Cape of Good Hope. In a few years the predominance of tea clippers in the China trade had ceased. Associates and competitors of Alfred Holt built similar ships and the nature of long-distance maritime trade had taken a major technological change. Fate In 1897 Agamemnon was transferred to Alfred Holt's Dutch subsidiary Nederlandsche Stoomboot Maatschappij Ocean. She was scrapped in 1899. References 1865 ships Ships built on the River Clyde Steamships of the United Kingdom Victorian-era merchant ships of the United Kingdom