The Sylph was a clipper ship built in Calcutta in 1831 for the Parsi merchant Rustomjee Cowasjee. After her purchase by the Hong Kong based merchant house Jardine Matheson, in 1833 Sylph went on to set an unbroken record by sailing from Calcutta to Macao in 17 days, 17 hours. She was primarily used to transport opium between various ports in the Far East. Two contemporary paintings of Sylph show her to have been a heavily rigged ship with trysails on each mast and a tall high-peaked spanker.