Jersey Client HTTPS performance issue

I am using a JUnit test with JERSEY Client + HTTPS to test a secure web service running on Jetty. One of my calls to wr.get( ClientResponse.class) hangs for 10 seconds after every block of 9-10 requests. The equivalent Apache client code runs in a few milliseconds. If I switch Jetty to HTTP mode the problem disappears.

I am using Jersey bundle & client 1.14 and Jetty 6.1.26

The apache client works

@Test
public void testApacheClient() throws Exception
{
  HttpClient client = new HttpClient();
  ProtocolSocketFactory socketFactory = new EasySSLProtocolSocketFactory();
  Protocol https = new Protocol( "https", socketFactory, 443 );
  Protocol.registerProtocol( "https", https );

  //Finishes in < 1 second
  for ( int i = 0; i < 30; i++ )
  {
    GetMethod getMethod = new GetMethod( "https://localhost:8443/home" );
    client.executeMethod( getMethod );
    String entity = getMethod.getResponseBodyAsString();
    getMethod.releaseConnection();
  }
}

The Jersey client hangs

@Test
public void testJerseyClient() throws Exception

  HostnameVerifier hv = getHostnameVerifier();
  ClientConfig config = new DefaultClientConfig();
  SSLContext ctx = getSslContext();
  config.getProperties().put( HTTPSProperties.PROPERTY_HTTPS_PROPERTIES,
      new HTTPSProperties( hv, ctx ) );

  Client jerseyClient = Client.create( config );

  //Finishes in < 1 second
  for ( int i = 0; i < 30; i++ )
  {
    WebResource wr = jerseyClient.resource( "https://www.google.com" );
    ClientResponse cr = wr.get( ClientResponse.class );
    String entity = cr.getEntity( String.class );
    cr.close();
  }

  /* Pauses for 10 seconds after the 10th request, and subsequently after every 9th request.
     Debugging shows waiting at line 'ClientResponse cr = ...'
   */
  for ( int i =