Lloyds made this a requirement in their first composite rules of 1867, whereby the garboard strakes had to extend two-thirds of the depth of keel and take horizontal bolts through the keel as well as vertical ones through the keel plate, the planks themselves being of extra thickness. Prior to this, on composite hulls, many of the garboard strakes had been giving trouble as they were wrought nearly parallel to the bottom planking and met the side of the keel at an acute corner, not permitting good horizontal bolting, with consequent leakage in the keel rabbet. In some instances the garboard area was designed with a pronounced concave hollow which b!ought the garboard strake almost sideways on to the keel with a deep vertical rabbet  This gave good connections and a deeper keel at the same time, it being laid in two vertical members because of the depth of the rabbet. But it also meant that the lower edge of the floor plate and its frame had to be shaped hollow, which required more work and wastage of plating. So by increasing the size of the garboard plank and those adjacent to it, to conform to Lloyd's requirements, a reasonable hollow garboard could be designed if required without a hollow, or with very little, in the internal ironwork. The famous Thermopylae (1868) had this arrangement, and the Cutty Sark (1869) slightly less so. The latter ship's original design for the midship section did have a pronounced hollow to the floor plate and frame, but this was probably altered for economic reasons as well as to conform to Lloyd's.

  The last of the true tea clippers was the Lothair, composite built in London in 1870, and two others of the same year were of iron, .the Blackadder and the Halloween, also built in London. From then onwards the iron and steel clippers, which were not quite so fine-lined and had entered the Colonial trade back in the 1850s for emigrants and wool, were left to carry on the tradition. Some of the tea clippers that remained joined them on the run to Australia and New Zealand, where speed was not economically vital.

   The plans given for the ship Foochow are intended to show atypical British wooden tea clipper with her arrangement and structure. Lest the reader should be inspired to trace the vessel's history I would hasten to add that it is an entirely fictional creation, no tea clipper with such a name having ever existed as far as lam aware. If a reader should be desirous of making a model tea clipper without the laborious and uncertain research work required for an actual ship, he could use these plans as a basis and make any changes he wishes, keeping them appropriate to the period.