She found tea freights slumping very badly at Shanghai, and was finally placed on the berth for general cargo only at 30s. per 50 cubic feet. _Salamis_ left Shanghai on 26th November in company with _Thermopylae_, which was the only sailing ship to get a tea cargo for London. The two ships made the Straits of Sunda on 15th December, but were compelled to anchor off Sumatra owing to the strong N.E. current. Here they found a fleet of 37 sail all vainly trying to get past Thwart-the-way Island.
Of this fleet the first to get through was _Thermopylae_ after several ineffectual attempts, but she was closely followed by her iron sister ship; clearing Java Head on 29th December after a delay of 14 days, the two sisters squared away for the S.E. trades, and left the fleet of 37 ships to wait patiently until the N.E. current slackened.
_Salamis_ carried the trades to 32° S., and then made some fine running to the Australian Coast, her best day’s work being 336 miles. On 26th January, 1879, she arrived off Port Phillip Heads and anchored off Queenscliff to await orders. She was sent up to Sydney and loaded coal alongside the _Cutty Sark_. On 18th March _Cutty Sark_ sailed for Shanghai with 1150 tons of coal, _Salamis_ followed on the 20th with 1200 tons of coal. Unfortunately I have no details of the race across, except that _Salamis_ made the run in 37 days. Both ships failed to get a tea cargo for the London market, and _Cutty Sark_ went off to Manila, whilst _Salamis_ went to Foochow, and took a tea cargo from there to Melbourne, which she reached in time to load wool home, after a very light weather passage of 64 days. After this unsatisfactory voyage _Salamis_ was kept steadily in the Melbourne trade, with the exception of one passage to Sydney.
When the Aberdeen White Star sold their sailing ships, _Salamis_ went to the Norwegians, who stripped the yards off her mizen mast and turned her into a barque. After several weary years of threadbare old age, the beautiful little clipper was finally wrecked on Malden Island in the South Pacific on 20th May, 1905.
The pretty little barque, _Woollahra_, owned by Cowlislaw Bros., of Sydney, had a very fair turn of speed, and on more than one occasion showed up well against some of the crack ships in the trade. In her later years she used to run from Newcastle, N.S.W., to Frisco with coal. She came to her end on Tongue Point, near Cape Terawhite, New Zealand, whilst bound in ballast from Wellington to Kaipara, to load Kauri lumber for Australia. She was wrecked about half a mile from the homestead of a sheep station, the only habitation on the coast for miles. The captain and an ordinary seaman were drowned, the rest of her complement getting safely ashore. She went to pieces very quickly and there was not even an odd spar or deck fitting left a few months afterwards.