Cutty Sark

This article is about the ship. For the whisky, see Cutty Sark (whisky). For other uses, see Cutty Sark (disambiguation).

Cutty Sark in dock, Greenwich - January 2005
Career (UK)
Name:	Cutty Sark (1869-95), (1922-date)
Namesake:	Cutty-sark
Owner:	John Willis (40/64 share) Robert Dunbar Willis (24/64 share)
Ordered:	1868
Builder:	Scott & Linton
Cost:	£16,500
Laid down:	1869
Launched:	22 November 1869
Sponsored by:	Mrs. Moodie
Christened:	22 November 1869
Commissioned:	16 February 1870
In service:	February 1870
Out of service:	December 1954
Homeport:	London (1870-1895) Falmouth (1923-38) London (1938-date)
Identification:	UK Official Number: 63557
Motto:	"Where there's a will is a way"
Status:	Museum ship
Career (Portugal)
Name:	Ferreira
Namesake:	Joaquim Antunes Ferreira
Owner:	Joaquim Antunes Ferreira & Co.
Acquired:	22 July 1895
Homeport:	Lisbon, Portugal
Nickname:	Pequena Camisola ("Little shirt")
Fate:	Refitted
Career (Portugal)
Name:	Maria do Amparo
Acquired:	1922
Homeport:	Lisbon, Portugal
Fate:	Sold
General characteristics
Class and type:	Clipper
Tonnage:	975 GRT
Displacement:	2,100 tons (2,133.7 tonnes) at 20 ft (6.1 m) draught
Length:	Hull: 212 ft 5 in (64.74 m) LOA: 280 ft (85.34 m)
Beam:	36 ft (10.97 m)
Sail plan:	1870 ship rig, 1916 barqentine rig
Speed:	17.15 kn (31.76 km/h)
Capacity:	1,700 tons (1542 tonnes)
Complement:	28-35

The Cutty Sark is a clipper ship. Built in 1869, she served as a merchant vessel (the last clipper to be built for that purpose), and then as a training ship until being put on public display in 1954. She is preserved in dry dock in Greenwich, London.

Cutty Sark is one of only three ships in London on the Core Collection of the National Historic Ships Register (the nautical equivalent of a Grade 1 Listed Building) – alongside HMS Belfast and SS Robin.

Badly damaged by fire on 21 May 2007 while undergoing conservation, the vessel is being restored and is expected to reopen in 2012. The Cutty Sark is one of only three remaining original composite construction (wooden hull on an iron frame) clipper ships from the nineteenth century in part or whole, the others being the City of Adelaide, awaiting transportation to Australia for preservation, and the beached skeleton of Ambassador of 1869 near Punta Arenas, Chile.

Construction and etymology

Cutty Sark under sail

The Cutty Sark was ordered by John "Jock" "White Hat" Willis expressly to outsail the clipper Thermopylae.

The ship was designed by Hercules Linton and a contract for her construction was signed 1 February 1869 with the firm of Scott & Linton, which had only been formed in May 1868. Their shipyard was at Dumbarton on the River Leven on a site previously occupied by shipbuilders William Denny & Brothers. The contract required the ship to be completed within six months at a contracted price of £17 per ton and maximum weight of 950 tons. This was a very competitive price for an experimental, state of the art ship, for a customer requiring the highest standards. Payment would be made in seven installments as the ship progressed, but with a penalty of £5 for every day the ship was late. The ship was to be built to Lloyds A1 standard and her construction was supervised on behalf of Willis by captain George Moodie, who would command her when completed. Construction delays occurred when the LLoyds inspectors required additional strengthening in the ship.

Work on the ship was suspended when Scott and Linton ran out of money to pay for further work. Rather than simply liquidate the company, an arrangement was made for Denny's to take over the contract and complete the ship, which was finally launched on 22 November 1869 by Captain Moody's wife. The ship was moved to Denny's yard to have her masts fitted, and then on 20 December towed downriver to Greenock to have her running rigging installed. In the event, completing the ships meant the company's creditors were owed even more money than when work had first been halted.

Her planking, deadwoods, stem and sternpost were of American rock elm, secured by brass bolts to an internal iron frame. The original keel was also rock elm and 17 inches (43 cm) thick, but was replaced in the 1920s with one constructed from 15 inches (38 cm) pitch pine. Her length was 212 feet 5 inches (64.74 m) with a draft of 21 feet (6.40 m) and a deadweight of 921 tons.

She was named after Cutty Sark (Scots: a short chemise or undergarment), the nickname of the fictional character Nannie Dee in Robert Burns' 1791 poem Tam o' Shanter. She is also represented as Nannie Dee by the ship's figurehead, a stark white carving of a bare-breasted woman with long black hair holding a grey horse's tail in her hand. In the poem she wore a linen sark that she had been given as a child, which explains why it was cutty, or in other words far too short, for her. The erotic sight of her dancing in such a short undergarment caused Tam to cry out "Weel done, Cutty-sark", which subsequently became a well known catchphrase.

History

Cutty Sark in Sydney Harbour awaiting a cargo of new season's wool, c.1890

Cutty Sark was destined for the tea trade, then an intensely competitive race across the globe from China to London, with a substantial bonus to the ship which arrived with the first tea of the year. Her first round trip voyage under captain George Moodie began 16 February 1870 from London with a cargo of wine, spirits and beer bound for Shanghai. The return journey with 1450 tons of tea from Shanghai began 25 June, arriving 13 October in London via the Cape of Good Hope. The ship completed eight round trip annual journeys, but the Suez Canal had opened to shipping in 1869 just as Cutty Sark was being launched. In the end, of course, clippers lost out to steamships, which could use the shorter route through the Canal and deliver goods more reliably, if not quite so quickly, which proved to be better business. Clippers were designed to make best use of the strong trade winds around the African coast route and could not use the shorter route through the canal and Red Sea.

The most famous tea clipper race occurred against Thermopylae in 1872, the two ships leaving Shanghai together on 18 June. Two weeks later Cutty Sark had built up a lead of some 400 miles, but then suffered damage to her rudder after passing through the Sunda Strait, finally arriving in London on 18 October a week after Thermopylae, a total passage of 122 days. Captain Moodie twice made repairs at sea in difficult conditions rather than putting into port for a replacement. The captain and crew were celebrated for their performance, but this was Moodie's last trip and the closest Cutty Sark came to being first ship home.

In December 1877 the ship sailed from London to Sydney, where she took on coal for Shanghai, arriving there in April. However, the ship was unable to find a cargo of tea for a return trip to London; the days of the tea race were over. The master, Captain Tiptaft died in October while still in Shanghai and was replaced by the first mate, James Wallace. The ship now had to take different cargoes around the world, including coal, jute, castor oil and tea to Australia.

In 1880 an incident occurred onboard during which the First Mate Sidney Smith killed seaman John Francis. Smith was allowed to leave the ship at Anjer by captain Wallace, causing the crew to cease work in protest. Wallace continued the voyage with six apprentices and four tradesmen but became becalmed in the Java Sea for three days. In desperation as matters moved from bad to worse, he committed suicide by jumping overboard and disappeared. He was replaced as Master by William Bruce, who proved to be a drunken incompetent who claimed pay for non existent crewmen and managed to set sail with inadequate provisions, resulting in the crew starving. An inquiry in New York in April 1882 resulted in the Captain and Mate being suspended and replaced By Captain Moore, previously of the Blackadder.

The wool trade

Cutty Sark in harbour, possibly Sydney. Another clipper can be seen in the background

In December 1883 Cutty Sark departed Newcastle, New South Wales with 4289 bales of wool and 12 casks of tallow, arriving back in London in just 83 days. This was 25 days faster than her nearest rival that year and heralded the start of a new career taking Australian wool to Britain in time to catch the January wool sales. In 1885 Richard Woodget was appointed Captain and continued to improve on the fastest trip record, achieving 77 days on his first outward trip and 73 days returning to England from Australia. He achieved this by taking a more southerly route than previously, to catch the strongest winds in the Roaring Forties despite having to face icebergs, gales and storms whipped up by the winds he sought. Cutty Sark was the fastest ship on the wool trade for ten years. In July 1889 the log of the modern passenger steam ship RMS Britannia recorded that when steaming at 15-16 knots she was overtaken in the night by a sailing ship doing 17 knots, which proved to be Cutty Sark.

Ships stern before renovation in 1994. The original dock arrangement can also be seen.

Eventually steamships began to dominate the wool trade too and it ceased to be profitable for a sailing ship. In 1895 Jock Willis sold Cutty Sark to the Portuguese firm Ferreira for £2,100 and she was renamed Ferreira after the firm. Her crews referred to her as Pequena Camisola ("little shirt", a straight translation of the Scots "cutty sark"). The ship traded various cargoes between Portugal, Rio, new Orleans, Mozambique, Angola and Britain. In May 1916 she was dismasted off the Cape of Good Hope because of the rolling of the ship in bad weather and had to be towed into Table Bay off Cape Town. The war meant that it was impossible to obtain suitable materials to replace the masts so she was re-rigged over 18 months to a barquentine sail arrangement.

In 1922 Ferreira was caught in a storm in the English channel and put into Falmouth harbour. There she was spotted by retired windjammer Captain Wilfred Dowman, of Trevissome House, Flushing, Cornwall, who was then operating the training ship Lady of Avenel. The ship returned to Lisbon, where she was sold to new owners and renamed Maria do Amparo. However, Dowman persevered in his determination to buy the ship, which he did for £3,750 and she was returned to Falmouth harbour. The rigging was restored to an approximation of the original arrangement and the ship was used as a cadet training ship. As a historic survivor, the ship was opened to the public and visitors would be rowed out to inspect her. Dowman died in 1936 and the ship was sold to the Incorporated Thames Nautical Training College, Greenhithe, leaving Falmouth for her last journey under sail in 1938. The ship was crewed by cadets, 15 year old Robert Wyld steering the ship during the voyage. Ian Bryce, DSC, the last surviving crew member on the historic tow from Falmouth to the Thames died, aged 89, on 11 December 2011..

The ships figurehead shows Cutty-sark, the nickname of the witch Nannie Dee who chases Tam'O Shanter, snatching his horses' tail before he escapes her by crossing water.

At Greenhithe Cutty Sark acted as an auxiliary vessel to HMS Worcester for sail training drill, but by 1950 she had become surplus to requirements. From February to October 1951 she was temporarily moved first for a refit and then to take part in the Festival of Britain at Deptford. On 30 January 1952, the 800 ton tanker MV Aqueity collided with Cutty Sark's bow in the Thames. The two ships were locked together after the collision which forced Cutty Sark's jib boom into Worcester's fo'cs'le rails, snapping the boom before scraping along Worcester's starboard side. Cutty Sark's figurehead the Naughty Witch lost an arm in the process. Cutty Sark was anchored and towed to the Shadwell Basin where repairs were carried out by Green & Silley Weir Ltd. The damaged arm was recovered at Grays Thurrock and the figurehead was repaired.

In 1954 she was moved to a custom-built dry-dock at Greenwich. She was stripped of upper masts, yards, deck-houses and ballast to lighten her before being towed from East India Import Dock to the special dry dock at Greenwich. The skipper on this occasion was 83-years old Captain C.E. Irving, who had sailed the world three times in her before he was 17. The river pilot was Ernest Coe. Thereafter the entrance tunnel to the dry dock was filled in, the river wall rebuilt and the work of re-rigging began. The foundation stone of the dry dock was laid by The Duke of Edinburgh, patron of the Cutty Sark Preservation Society, in June 1953. The restoration, re-rigging and preparation for public exhibition was estimated to cost £250,000.

Cutty Sark October 8, 1987

Cutty Sark whisky derives its name from the ship. An image of the clipper appears on the label, and the maker formerly sponsored the Cutty Sark Tall Ships' Race. The ship also inspired the name of the Saunders Roe Cutty Sark flying boat.

Museum ship

Cutty Sark in Greenwich, October 2003

The Cutty Sark was preserved as a museum ship, and has since become a popular tourist attraction, and part of the National Historic Fleet, Core Collection. She is located near the centre of Greenwich, in south-east London, close aboard the National Maritime Museum, the former Greenwich Hospital, and Greenwich Park. She is also a prominent landmark on the route of the London Marathon. She usually flies signal flags from her ensign halyard reading "JKWS", which is the code representing Cutty Sark in the International Code of Signals, introduced in 1857.

The ship is in the care of the Cutty Sark Trust, whose president, the Duke of Edinburgh, was instrumental in ensuring her preservation, when he set up the Cutty Sark Society in 1951. The Trust replaced the Society in 2000. She is a Grade I listed monument and is on the Buildings At Risk Register.

Cutty Sark station on the Docklands Light Railway is one minute's walk away, with connections to central London and the London Underground. Greenwich Pier is next to the ship, and is served by scheduled river boats from piers in central London. A tourist information office stands to the east of the ship.

Cutty Sark in Greenwich, 1977

Conservation and fire

The ship one week before the fire. Most of the upper works had already been dismantled for renovation.

Cutty Sark on fire.

On the morning of 21 May 2007, the Cutty Sark, which had been closed and partly dismantled for conservation work, caught fire, and burned for several hours before the London Fire Brigade could bring the fire under control. Initial reports indicated that the damage was extensive, with most of the wooden structure in the center having been lost.

In an interview the next day, Richard Doughty, the chief executive of the Cutty Sark Trust, revealed that at least half of the "fabric" (timbers, etc.) of the ship had not been on site as it had been removed during the preservation work. Doughty stated that the trust was most worried about the state of iron framework to which the fabric was attached. He did not know how much more the ship would cost to restore, but estimated it at an additional £5–10 million, bringing the total cost of the ship's restoration to £30–35 million.

After initial analysis of the CCTV footage of the area suggested the possibility of arson, further investigation over the following days by the Metropolitan Police failed to find conclusive proof that the fire was set deliberately.

Damage

The day after the fire, 21 May 2007.

Aerial video footage showed extensive damage, but seemed to indicate that the ship had not been destroyed in its entirety. A fire officer present at the scene said in a BBC interview that when they arrived, there had been "a well-developed fire throughout the ship". The bow section looked to be relatively unscathed and the stern also appeared to have survived without major damage. The fire seemed to have been concentrated in the centre of the ship. The chairman of Cutty Sark Enterprises said after inspecting the site: "The decks are unsalvageable but around 50% of the planking had already been removed; however, the damage is not as bad as originally expected."^{[citation needed]}

As part of the restoration work planned before the fire, it was proposed that the ship be raised three metres, to allow the construction of a state of the art museum space beneath. This would allow visitors to view her from below.

There was criticism of the policies of the Cutty Sark Trust and its stance that the most important thing was to preserve as much as possible of the original fabric. Proponents of making her fit to go to sea advocated that the fire repairs be done in such a manner to enable her to do so. However, the state of the timbers, especially the keel, and the fact that two huge holes were cut through the hull in the 1950s, made this impossible. Also, the Cutty Sark Trust claims that under five percent of the original fabric was lost in the fire, as the decks which were destroyed were non-original additions.

Fund-raising

In addition to explaining how and why the ship is being saved, the exhibition features a new film presentation, a re-creation of the master's saloon, and interactive exhibits about the project.

Cutty Sark during repairs after the fire

The design for the renovation project by Grimshaw architects with, during concept stage, Youmeheshe architects and Buro Happold engineers involved raising the ship out of her dry berth using a Kevlar web, allowing visitors to pass under the hull to view it. Unfortunately it was discovered that the proposed web would not follow the reverse curves of the ship's hull which would effectively mask the hull's shape from view. An alternate design for the support of the ship has been developed which involves installing a steel belt around the hull tied by diagonal steel members passing through the hold to a new steel reinforced keel. Horizontal tubular steel struts passing through the hold will brace the diagonals apart while many of the corroded original hull frames are being doubled.

A new steelwork lower deck of contemporary design incorporating an amphitheatre feature is being installed in the main hold while a glass encased lift will be installed within the ship terminating in a new glass housing structure on the weather deck. Access to the ship is to be through a new opening which will be cut through the hull below the waterline in the ship's starboard quarter. Maldwin Drummond, Chairman of the Cutty Sark Trust, has explained in Classic Boat magazine's September 2010 issue the need to retain the spirit of the ship and he quotes the ideal that "The visitor should see the ship as though for some unexplained reason the crew had gone ashore". Doubts over the wisdom of Grimshaw's proposals have been raised by many ship conservationists including the Cutty Sark Trust's own engineer Peter Mason.

Cutty Sark in February 2012, repairs nearing completion. The temporary cover which surrounded the ship during repair has been removed although workmen can still be seen on deck and in the rigging where not all yards have been replaced. Work was underway around the dock to lay new paving.

The project was costed at £25 million when it commenced in 2006 with £11.75 million of this total being provided by a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Oscar-winning producer Jerry Bruckheimer aided in the repair and restoration of the Cutty Sark. A collection of photos taken by Bruckheimer went on display in London in November 2007 to help raise money for the Cutty Sark Conservation Project. The exhibition featured more than thirty pictures taken on set during the filming of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

In January 2008, the Heritage Lottery Fund awarded the Cutty Sark Trust another £10 million towards the restoration of the ship, meaning that the Trust had now achieved £30 million of the £35 million needed for the completion of the project.^{[citation needed]}

In June 2008, Israeli shipping magnate Sammy Ofer donated the outstanding £3.3 million needed to fully restore the ship although by January 2009 the Evening Standard reported that the cost had risen further to £40 million creating a new shortfall. In February 2010 the Daily Telegraph reported the project cost had risen to £46 million with public money now being made available to fill the funding gap.

Investigation conclusion

On 30 September 2008, the London Fire Brigade announced the conclusion of the investigation into the fire at a press conference at New Scotland Yard. The painstaking investigation was conducted by the LFB, along with London's Metropolitan Police Service, Forensic Science Services, and electrical examination experts Dr. Burgoyne's & Partners. They said that the most likely cause was the failure of an industrial vacuum cleaner that may have been left switched on over the weekend before the fire started. The report revealed no evidence the ship was subjected to arson attack and concluded the fire started accidentally.

Physical evidence and CCTV footage of the fire showed that it probably started towards the stern of the ship on the lower deck. All electrical equipment onboard was examined and it was determined that an industrial vacuum cleaner in this area was normally running continuously to suck up dust and particles from work going on to break up concrete within the ship. No one working on the ship had responsibility to ensure all equipment was turned off at the end of a day, and no one recalled switching off the equipment on the Friday in question. The vacuum cleaner has three motors inside and after the fire one was found to be burned out in a manner which suggested it had failed while operating. This was not conclusive evidence, however, because the motor might previously have failed in service without causing a fire, and gone unnoticed because the other two motors had continued to function. Tests on similar cleaners showed they had no thermal cutout devices and while they could run safely indefinitely if filters inside were clear, if the air flow through the cleaner was blocked then it would eventually overheat and could catch fire. This might occur if the cleaner was full of dust and debris. The cleaner had failed previously and two motors had been replaced.

Bow

On the basis of witness evidence, the joint investigation team considered it unlikely that the fire was caused by the hot work (welding) that was being carried out as part of the renovation or by carelessly discarded smokers' materials. No one visited this part of the ship since work stopped on Friday evening, and it was considered unlikely that a fire could have smouldered all weekend before finally breaking out Monday morning. However, it was discovered that although all hot work was supposed to be recorded and someone was supposed to check afterwards to ensure no fires, there was no record that such checks had ever been made, and on at least one occasion hot work had been conducted with no records made.

The ship was patrolled by two security guards, both of whom were supposed to patrol independantly at least once an hour, or once every two hours later in the night, one being primarily responsible for the visitor pavillion and one the dock. The guards were required to keep a log of their patrols, but after the fire the relevant page was found to be missing from the book. It was later found, already filled in reporting uneventfull patrols of the site up to 7 am in the morning when the guards would have gone off duty. The alarm was raised when one of the guards called the fire brigade; before this the two reported that they had smelled burning plastic and had been investigating to try to determine its source.

A carpenter had visited the site on Sunday to collect some tools, but after 20 minutes attempting to contact a security guard to let him in, had climbed the fence, collected his tools and climbed out again. The carpenter reported that he had heard machinery operating towards the stern of the ship, but it was not clear whether this might have been the site diesel generator which ran at all times.

The ship was fitted with a temporary fire alarm system but it was unclear whether this had operated. A separate alarm within the pavillion did sound when smoke and heat reached that area, but the guards reported no ringing alarm before the fire was seen. Investigation afterwards discovered a faulty relay in the alarm panel which failed to switch power to the siren circuits when an alarm was triggered. However, the panel also contained a failed fuse in one siren circuit which suggested that the siren had activated but the fire shorted it out, and this might have also caused the relay to fail. The failed relay would have shut off power to the second siren circuit. Statements from workers suggested that weekly tests of the alarm system had not been carried out.

Mast specifications

The original mast specifications as laid down by the ships designer still exist and are listed below as "tea rig". This arrangement was used during the ship's time on the tea trade route, where it was necessary to maximise the area of sail to get the greatest possible propulsion when the ship might be becalmed in the doldrums. For the route to Australia it was not necessary to carry such a large area of sail and the masts and yards were reduced. The trade winds required great strength in masts, but the wind could best be captured by relatively small, high sails. A smaller rig also represented a saving in maintenance costs. Each of the three masts (fore, main and mizzen) is in three overlapping sections

Stern draft and rudder

Mast heights above deck m			Yard lengths m
	Tea rig	Sydney		Tea rig	Sydney
Foretop	18.8	16.5	Fore course	23.8	21.0
Topgallant	29.8	24.3	Lowertopsail	20.7	16.8
Royal	39.6	35.4	Uppertopsail	19.5	14.6
Maintop	19.8	16.9	Topgallant	14.6	11.5
Topgallant	31.9	22.8	Royal	11.6	9.4
Royal		36.3	Main course	23.8	21.6
Skysail	44.5		Lowertopsail	20.7	18.5
Mizzentop	17.0	14.8	Uppertopsail	19.5	16.8
Topgallant	25.7	22.8	Topgallant	14.6	14.2
Royal	33.2	31.7	Royal	11.6	10.4
			Skysail	10.4
			Mizzen course	18.3	17.4
			Lowertopsail	16.5	14.9
			Uppertopsail	14.6	13.4
			Topgallant	11.9	11.0
			Royal	10.1	8.2
			Spanker	15.8	14.1

See also

• City of Adelaide
• Cutty Sark (short story)
• Falls of Clyde (ship)
• Ambassador
• List of clipper ships
• List of large sailing vessels
• List of tall ships
• Star of India

External links

• Official site
• Docklands Light Railway (DLR) - Cutty Sark Station
• Aerial view of Cutty Sark at Google Maps
• Location of Cutty Sark on Bloosee
• Images of England - details from listed building text
• Buildings at Risk Register: Cutty+Sark
• MaritimeQuest Cutty Sark Pages
• HNSA Web Page: Cutty Sark
• Belarussian memorial coins with Cutty Sark on reverse side