The Cutty Sark was once the most famous of the great clippers, the name 'clipper', referring to the fastest sailing ships of the nineteenth century that traversed the world's major trading routes.
Cutty Sark’s name comes from the famous poem Tam O’Shanter by Robert Burns. It is about a farmer called Tam who is chased by a scantily-clad witch called Nannie, dressed only in a ‘cutty sark’—an archaic Scottish name for a short nightdress. Cutty Sark’s figurehead is a depiction of Nannie and Cutty Sark’s collections feature a number of items connected to Robert Burns and the Tam O’Shanter legend.
Naming the ship
The legend of Tam O’Shanter
Robert Burns’s poem Tam O’Shanter is based on a Scottish legend about a farmer of the same name.
After drinking at a pub one night, Tam starts his journey home on his trusty old mare Meg. But on his way he is transfixed by the sight of witches and wizards dancing around a bonfire in a churchyard.
One witch in particular, Nannie, catches his attention. She is young and beautiful and wearing only a cutty sark. Afraid but unable to drag himself away, Tam loses himself and shouts out ‘Weel done cutty sark’ in appreciation of her dancing.
Alerted to his presence, the witches pursue Tam, with Nannie in the lead. Knowing that witches can't cross water, Tam and Meg head for the river Doon. Just as they are about to cross, Nannie reaches out and grabbs Meg’s tail, which mysteriously comes away in Nannie’s hand, saving Tam’s life.
The crew of Cutty Sark often placed a frayed rope in the figurehead Nannie’s hand, representing Meg’s tail.
The Cutty Sark was a masterpiece, the pinnacle of sailing ship design. Her composite hull of timber and iron was sleek and strong, while her three masts could hold a spread of the canvas. As a result, she spent the 1870s speeding across the high seas, establishing a reputation as one of the fastest ships afloat.
Not only did she change the quality of her life, but she did not change her style, she was incredibly fashionable amongst the tearooms and parlors of Victorian Britain. The first batch of the new tea harvest was highly coveted and thus the first tea. Indeed, the annual tea race was a Victorian sensation: the ships' progress was reported by telegraph and could be followed in the papers. Huge bets were laid on the outcome. The Cutty Sark was never first to the finish line, but she was still one of the fastest. In 1872 she was involved in one of the most famous tea races of all time, against the Thermopylae. The two ships were neck and neck until the cut. Sark lost her rudder in the heavy seas in the Indian Ocean. The accident meant Thermopylae beat her back to London by 7 days, but the Cutty Sark's performance was nevertheless remarkable.
The ship's owner, Jock Willis, was determined to turn her fortunes around and so, in 1885, he hired an excellent, albeit eccentric, clipper captain named Richard Woodget. Captain Woodget recognized that the Cutty Sark's commercial edge is now in the dangerous wool run to Australia. In this arena the Cutty Sark once again excelled, setting speed records between London and Melbourne and Sydney. For a decade she established her fame through her lightning voyages, but by 1895, she was approaching to be profitable.
After her heyday, the Cutty Sark was sold to a Portuguese company, who renamed her the Ferreira. The ship spent 25 years transporting cargoes between Portugal, Africa and the Americas, and managed to avoid German U-boats during World War I. In the 1920s, she was purchased by Captain Dowman, a former clipper who remembered the Cutty Sark from her glory days. Dowman renamed her the Cutty Sark and brought her to Falmouth, where she was restored and opened to the public.
When the ship was launched, it was the Indian summer of the great sailing ships. The Suez Canal, which had opened the very same year, offered steamships a shorter route to the Far East, slashing about two months off their journey time. The winds of the Red Sea and the Mediterranean were not suited to the clippers though. Increasing speed and cargo capacity. By the late 1870s, the Cutty Sark had been pushed out of the tea trade.
The Cutty Sark's Future looked bleak: in 1880, she set off on the voyage to Japan to deliver coal for the American Pacific fleet. It was never completed. A fight amongst the crew, left alone, the dead, and the man. The ship's captain, the realm of his career. These dark events gave the Cutty Sark a new reputation amongst sailors, as a 'hellship' and a cursed vessel.
Jock Willis, the original owner of the ship, chose the name Cutty Sark, which was allegedly suggested to him by the ship’s designer, Hercules Linton. It is a rather peculiar choice of name for a ship, as in legend – and indeed in Burns’ poem – witches are unable to cross water.
We do not know definitively why Jock selected this name. It could reflect his patriotism, choosing a name inspired by the Scotland’s most famous poet another ship in his fleet was named Halloween also the name of a Burns poem.
Upon Dowman's death in 1936, the ship passed to the navy. Training College at Greenhithe to be used as a training ship by British naval cadets. Aboard her, a generation of Royal and Merchant Navy cadets were trained on how to work a sailing ship. Time finally ran out for the Cutty Sark after World War II, when the Training College got a new training ship.
Now facing the scrapyard, the Cutty Sark was once again rescued from obscurity. In 1951, the Cutty Sark Society was established by her admirers. With the support of the public and the Society's patron, the Duke of Edinburgh, funds were raised to rescue her. In 1954, she was placed in dry dock in Greenwich, London. There she was served as a unique example of the breathtaking ship design and as a symbol of Britain's proud maritime heritage. She also became the memorial to the Merchant Navy and its losses in two world wars.
Over the decades, the same timbers that were once pounded by the storms of the Cape Horn. Years of exposure to the elements took their toll. Her wooden hull was waterlogged and rotting and the iron frame that supports them was rusting.
