After the big improvement in the fuel efficiency of steamships in 1866, the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 gave them a shorter route to China, so Cutty Sark spent only a few years on the tea trade before turning to the trade in wool from Australia, where she held the record time to Britain for ten years.^[5] Continuing improvements in steam technology meant that gradually steamships also came to dominate the longer sailing route to Australia, and the ship was sold to the Portuguese company Ferreira and Co. in 1895 and renamed Ferreira. She continued as a cargo ship until purchased in 1922 by retired sea captain Wilfred Dowman, who used her as a training ship operating from Falmouth, Cornwall. After his death, Cutty Sark was transferred to the Thames Nautical Training College, Greenhithe in 1938 where she became an auxiliary cadet training ship alongside HMS Worcester. By 1954, she had ceased to be useful as a cadet ship and was transferred to permanent dry dock at Greenwich, London, for public display.

Cutty Sark is listed by National Historic Ships as part of the National Historic Fleet (the nautical equivalent of a Grade 1 Listed Building). She 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, which arrived in Port Adelaide, South Australia on 3 February 2014 for preservation, and the beached skeleton of Ambassador of 1869 near Punta Arenas, Chile.

The ship has been damaged by fire twice in recent years, first on 21 May 2007 while undergoing conservation. She was restored and was reopened to the public on 25 April 2012.^[6] Funders for the Cutty Sark conservation project include: the Heritage Lottery Fund, the House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, Sammy Ofer Foundation, Greenwich Council, Greater London Authority, The Stavros Niarchos Foundation, Berry Brothers & Rudd, Michael Edwards, Alisher Usmanov.^[7]

On 19 October 2014 she was damaged in a smaller fire.^[8]

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.

Construction[edit]

Cutty Sark was ordered by ship-owner John Willis, who operated a shipping company founded by his father. The company had several ships in the tea trade from China to Britain. Speed was an advantage to vessels carrying a high value, seasonal product, such as tea. Faster ships could obtain higher rates of freight (the price paid to transport the cargo), and tea merchants would use the names of fast-sailing ships that had carried their products in their advertising.^[2]:?13? Cutty Sark was ordered during a boom in building tea clippers in the period 1865–69—something that was attributed to a substantial reduction in the import duties for tea.^{[9]:?introduction?} In 1868 the brand new Aberdeen built clipper Thermopylae set a record time of 61 days port to port on her maiden voyage from London to Melbourne and it was this design that Willis set out to better.^[10]

It is uncertain how the hull shape for Cutty Sark was chosen. Willis chose Hercules Linton to design and build the ship but Willis already possessed another ship, The Tweed, which he considered to have exceptional performance. The Tweed (originally Punjaub) was a frigate designed by Oliver Lang based on the lines of an old French frigate, built in Bombay for the East India Company as a combination sail/paddle steamer. She and a sister ship were purchased by Willis, who promptly sold the second ship plus engines from The Tweed for more than he paid for both. The Tweed was then lengthened and operated as a fast sailing vessel, but was considered too big for the tea runs. Willis also commissioned two all-iron clippers with designs based upon The Tweed, Hallowe'en and Blackadder. Linton was taken to view The Tweed in dry dock.

Willis considered that The Tweed's bow shape was responsible for its notable performance, and this form seems to have been adopted for Cutty Sark. Linton, however, felt that the stern was too barrel shaped and so gave Cutty Sark a squarer stern with less tumblehome. The broader stern increased the buoyancy of the ship's stern, making it lift more in heavy seas so it was less likely that waves would break over the stern, and over the helmsman at the wheel.^{[11]:?20–24?[12]} Cutty Sark was given masts that followed the design of The Tweed, with similar good rake and the foremast on both placed further aft than usual.^[13]:?291?

A contract for Cutty Sark's construction was signed on 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 size of 950 tons. This was a highly competitive price for an experimental, state-of-the-art vessel, and for a customer requiring the highest standards. Payment would be made in seven instalments as the ship progressed, but with a penalty of £5 for every day the ship was late. The ship was to be built to Lloyd's 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 Lloyd's inspectors required additional strengthening in the ship.^[14]

Work on the ship was suspended when Scott and Linton ran out of money to continue. 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 Moodie'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 ship meant the company's creditors were owed even more money than when work had first been halted.^[15]

Cutty Sark has a registered length of 212.5 feet (64.77 m), with a depth of hold of 21 feet (6.40 m) and a net tonnage of 921. The hull is one of the sharpest of all the tea clippers: she has a coefficient of under deck tonnage^[a] of 0.55, compared to Thermopylae at 0.58.^{[2]:?195–99,?247?} Cutty Sark's prismatic coefficient, another measure of hull sharpness, is 0.628; this allows comparison with US built clippers studied by Howard I. Chapelle.^[b][c] After water-line length, the prismatic coefficient is the next most important determinant of potential hull speed.^[17] Unladen, or with a cargo of low density, ballast was required for stability. For example, when she was loaded with wool, 200 tons of ballast was carried. The largest wool cargo she ever carried was 900 tons weight (the total of ballast and cargo of 1,100 is consistent with the estimated deadweight cargo capacity of 1,135 tons at 20 ft draught). The largest tea cargo carried was 615 tons weight. Conversely, a dense cargo allowed full use of the deadweight capacity: if loaded with coal, she would usually carry 1,100 tons.^[3]:?187?

Broadly, the parts of the ship visible above the waterline were constructed from East India teak, while American rock elm was used for the ship's bottom. The stem, 15 in × 15 in (38 cm × 38 cm), and sternpost, 16.5 in × 15 in (42 cm × 38 cm), were of teak while the rudder was of English oak. The keel was replaced in the 1920s with one constructed from 15 in (38 cm) pitch pine.^[18] The deck was made of 3.5 in (8.9 cm) thick teak while the 'tween deck was 3 in (7.6 cm) yellow pine. The keel, 16.5 in × 15 in (42 cm × 38 cm), had on either side a garboard strake, 11 in × 12 in (28 cm × 30 cm), and then 6 in (15 cm) planking decreasing to 4.75 in (12.1 cm) at 1/5 the depth of the hold. Teak planking began at approximately the level of the bilge stringer. The hull was covered by Muntz metal sheeting up to the 18 ft (5.5 m) depth mark, and all the external timbers were secured by Muntz metal bolts to the internal iron frame.^[18] The wrought-iron^[19] frame was an innovation first experimented with in shipbuilding in the 1840s, and was the standard building method for tea clippers by the middle of the 1860s.^[2]:?132? It consisted of frames (vertical), beams (horizontal) and cross bracing (diagonal members).^[20]

The diagonally-braced iron frame made for a strong, rigid ship;^[20] diagonal members prevent racking (shearing, where frame rectangles become parallelograms).^[21] Less working and leaking of the hull meant less crew time spent pumping, allowing more time to be spent on changes of sail.^{[citation needed]} The wrought-iron-framed hull also took up less cargo space than an all-wood hull would have done.^[20] The Muntz metal sheeting reduced fouling of Cutty Sark's hull;^[19] with a cleaner hull, she could sail faster.^[22]

Performance[edit]

The maximum logged speed for Cutty Sark was 17.5 knots (32.4 km/h; 20.1 mph). Her greatest recorded distance in noon to noon sights was 363 nautical miles (672 km; 418 mi) averaging 15 knots (28 km/h; 17 mph), although she recorded 2,164 nautical miles (4,008 km; 2,490 mi)^[25] in six days, which given the weather over the whole period implied she had achieved over 370 nmi (690 km; 430 mi) some days.^[26] By comparison, Thermopylae's best recorded 24-hour distance was 358 nmi (663 km; 412 mi). On another occasion she recorded 3,457 nautical miles (6,402 km; 3,978 mi) in 11 days.^[23] Cutty Sark was considered to have the edge in a heavier wind, and Thermopylae in a lighter wind.^{[13]:?155–157?}

Name[edit]

The ship was named after Cutty-sark, the nickname of the witch Nannie Dee in Robert Burns's 1791 poem Tam o' Shanter. The ship's figurehead, the original of which has been attributed to carver Fredrick Hellyer of Blackwall, is a stark white carving of a bare-breasted Nannie Dee with long black hair holding a grey horse's tail in her hand.^[27] In the poem she wore a linen sark (Scots: a short chemise or undergarment^[28]), that she had been given as a child, which explains why it was cutty, or in other words far too short. 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. Originally, carvings by Hellyer of the other scantily clad witches followed behind the figurehead along the bow, but these were removed by Willis in deference to 'good taste'. Tam o' Shanter riding Meg was to be seen along the ship's quarter. The motto "Where theres a will is a way" was inscribed along the taffrail,^[29] with variable spaces enabling also the reading Where there(')s a Willis away. The Tweed, which acted as a model for much of the ship which followed her, had a figurehead depicting Tam o' Shanter.^[30]

History[edit]

First tea seasons[edit]

Cutty Sark was destined for the tea trade, a seasonal trade of a high value cargo from China to London. Though the "premium" or bonus paid to the ship that arrived with the first tea of the year was abandoned after the Great Tea Race of 1866, faster ships could usually obtain a higher price for transporting their cargoes than others.^[2] Her first roundtrip 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, carrying 1,305,812 lbs (592 306 kg) of tea from Shanghai, began 25 June, arriving 13 October in London via the Cape of Good Hope.

Cutty Sark sailed in eight "tea seasons", from London to China and back.^[2]