Cutty Sark

"Cried out "Weel done, Cutty Sark!"
And in an instant all was dark.

Don...I dont think this was a terrorist attack or anything like that...probably teenagers did it for a laugh.

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An icon of seafaring bombast, trade and cultural exchange


We should dig deep to restore the Cutty Sark, the Ferrari of the high seas, whose mythic value has resurfaced as it smoulders
Tristram Hunt
Tuesday May 22, 2007
The Guardian


It is not often that "old ship burns" is the lead item on Radio 4's Today programme, or the subject of a two-hour 5 Live phone-in. But this ship happens to be the Cutty Sark, and yesterday's extraordinary outpouring of affection following a suspicious night-time blaze revealed just how significant this delicate tea clipper is to a broader sense of ourselves.

A familiar landmark on the London marathon route and a curiously enduring tourist attraction for residents and visitors alike, the Cutty Sark is little short of a national icon. More so even than HMS Victory, it opens up a history and identity that speaks powerfully to modern Britain. The ship is an unspoken part of our historic fabric whose value has resurfaced as it smoulders.

The Cutty Sark's story is remarkable. Commissioned by John "Jock" Willis to carry tea from China to London's East India docks, it was designed to be the fastest ship on the sea. It was built by Scott and Linton of Dumbarton, launched in 1869 and commanded the South China Sea through the 1870s.
However, the opening of the Suez Canal and rapid dominance of steam ships undid its purpose. So the Cutty Sark was transferred to the wool trade where it achieved international fame ratcheting up record sprints between Sydney and London to deliver last-minute sales. With an intensity akin to today's formula one, newspapers, dock workers and City traders followed its dashes around the world.

The speed came from the hull: a mix of iron and timber bolted together to produce a light structure with remarkably finished lines. To crouch in the Greenwich dry dock next to the stern and peer along the hull towards the bow is to bear witness to one of the great engineering triumphs of British history. As one 5 Live contributor put it, the Cutty Sark was "the Ferrari of the sea".

However, its reach goes beyond naval buffs. Somehow, the ship has become an icon of London, if not Britain. It was no accident that it featured so prominently in the iconography surrounding the 2012 Olympics bid. The Cutty Sark is a part of what John Burns called "the liquid history" of the Thames and, with it, Britain's naval heritage. Perhaps deep down the British still imagine themselves an island, seafaring nation: one ready to stand alone, but also to rule the waves. In an age of industrial trawlers and vast supertankers, the Cutty Sark's meticulously designed rigging, masts, cabins and berths offer an enduring testament to the romance of the high seas.

The Cutty Sark also says something unique, connecting the London of today - the world's metropolis - to the imperial capital of the late 19th century. Standing on the deck, with the Royal Observatory behind and the towers of Canary Wharf and Heron's Quay ahead, takes one back to the world of Conrad, Conan Doyle and the teeming docks. This was a cityscape of endless distribution and exchange, and today it is again, with the partners of Lehman Brothers, HSBC, and Credit Suisse assuming the place once held by the wharf owners and dock barons.

But the Cutty Sark was really about free trade. The tea and wool - and, later, coffee and cotton - it brought to London from China, Australia, north America and east Africa were part of a global market in which Britain stood centre-stage. As such, to some City minds, it is the original herald of free enterprise: a vessel embodying the "gift" of an international free market which the British empire helped bequeath to the world.

However, behind the ideals of free trade stood the reality of imperialism. It was the mid-19th-century opium wars in China that opened up the tea market for Britain. It was the calculated decimation of the Indian cotton industry that paved the way for Lancashire's export market. Across the colonies, British policy had long sought to extract raw materials and import finished products from British factories. The Royal Navy was never far behind the merchant navy and the Cutty Sark was part of that history.

These competing narratives offer an interpretative problem for any museum. On the one hand, the ship's past is a story of seafaring bombast, a codified sense of Britishness and imperial power politics. On the other, it is a more supple tale of global trading and mutual cultural exchange. Thankfully, the ship has been in the excellent care of the Cutty Sark Trust, which has engaged with the Chinese, Australian and Brazilian communities to offer a very nuanced account of the ship's past and present in the context of modern, multicultural London. It is a global story of Britishness that goes beyond the old paradigm of high seas and imperial benevolence. That is why some 14 million people have come on board since it berthed at Greenwich in 1957.

Of course, the Cutty Sark is not the only historic ship in jeopardy. There are 1,200 ships listed on the National Historic Ships Committee database, of which more than 10% are deemed at risk. At Irvine harbour, for example, the once majestic 19th-century clipper City of Adelaide lies in mortal danger. But there is something magnetic about the Cutty Sark. It joins the Mary Rose in lingering somewhere special in our collective national consciousness. It behoves us now to dig deep to secure its mythic legacy for future generations.

· Tristram Hunt is a lecturer in history at Queen Mary, University of London

But now that we have seen her up close, it is serious, but it is not the end. The Cutty Sark has meant so much to so many people, that whatever it costs, and however long it takes, we will put her back together.

A fire which caused £10m of damage to the Cutty Sark was sparked by electrical machinery, police said today.

Investigators found an industrial vacuum cleaner accidentally left switched on for two days was the cause of the blaze.

The machine was being used to remove waste from the ship as part of a renovation programme when the fire occurred in May 2007.

Officials found the equipment had been left running throughout the weekend before the fire broke out in the early hours of Monday morning.

Physical evidence and CCTV footage of the fire revealed it broke out towards the stern of the ship on the lower deck.

Police said there was no evidence the ship was subjected to an arson attack and said the fire was started accidentally.

Officers added it was unlikely the fire was caused by hot work being carried out as part of the conservation or by a discarded cigarette.