22 November: The Cutty Sark

This date in 1869 saw the launch of the Cutty Sark, a ship which is now a tourist attraction in London.

1. Cutty Sark is a British ship, built on the Clyde in 1869, one of the fastest tea clippers in the world in her heyday. Today she is a tourist attraction based in Greenwich, London. Despite being a Tea clipper, later in her career she also transported wool from Australia.
2. Her original owners were the Jock Willis Shipping Line. The ship's motto, "Where there's a Willis away" reflects this.
3. The ship was named for a Witch in a Robert Burns poem; Nannie Dee in Burns's 1791 poem Tam o' Shanter, to be exact. Nannie Dee used to dance in a very short chemise, or "sark". "Cutty" means short. In the poem, Tam calls out to her, "Weel done, Cutty-sark". The ship's figurehead is a white carving of Nannie Dee with long black hair holding a Grey horse's tail in her hand, in the throes of a significant "wardrobe malfunction". Originally, there were a row of scantily clad witches behind her on the bow, but Jock Willis thought these were in bad taste and had them removed.
4. She was launched on 22 November 1869 by Captain Moodie's wife. The ship had no masts or sails at launch - she had to be towed downriver to have these fitted during December. Her first voyage, under captain George Moodie, began in February 1870. She went from London with a cargo of Wine, spirits and Beer to Shanghai. The return journey, carrying 1,305,812 lbs of tea began in June, arriving 13 October in London. She did this trip eight times.
5. Faster ships got a higher price for their cargo, so to be first back with that season's cargo of tea was something of an accolade. The competition to achieve this became known as the "tea race" and people would bet on which ship would arrive first. A Scottish ship called Thermopylae had set a record time of 61 days on her maiden voyage from London to Melbourne in 1868, and Willis was determined that his ship would beat her. The two ships raced each other from Shanghai in 1872, both leaving port on 18 June. Cutty Sark was winning by 400 nautical miles (460 mi; 740 km) when she hit a gale in the Sunda Strait and lost her rudder. The competition was so fierce that, rather than put in to Cape Town for repairs, the captain insisted on carrying on, with the ship's carpenter Henry Henderson building a new rudder as they went. This took six days, and rough seas made the process difficult and dangerous, since they were working with hot metal. The captain's son suffered burns when a brazier spilled. Cutty Sark arrived in London on 18 October a week after Thermopylae. Henderson received a £50 bonus for his work.
6. There were several captains after George Moodie, not all of them commendable. Moodie was replaced by Captain F. W. Moore. A later captain, Captain Tiptaft, died in Shanghai during a voyage and the first mate James Wallace took over. His first mate, Sidney Smith, killed another crew member, John Francis. Wallace let Smith leave the ship at Anjer so the remaining crew went on strike in protest - so the only working crew were six apprentices and four tradesmen. The ship was subsequently becalmed for three days in the Java sea and eventually Captain Wallace committed suicide. His replacement was William Bruce, who was a drunken fraudster who set sail with insufficient provisions, starving his crew. The next captain was Captain Moore.
7. Cutty Sark belonged to Portugal for a while. When steam ships made sailing ships unprofitable, Jock Willis sold Cutty Sark to the Portuguese firm Joaquim Antunes Ferreira for £1,250, in 1895. They renamed her Ferreira but she was nicknamed "Pequena Camisola" which is basically Portuguese for Cutty Sark.
8. Caught in a storm in the English Channel she put into Falmouth harbour where she was spotted by retired windjammer captain Wilfred Dowman. He decided he wanted to buy her and use her as a training ship. He paid £3,750 for her. When Dowman died in 1936 the ship was sold to the Incorporated Thames Nautical Training College. For her last journey under sail, the crew was made up of cadets with Robert Wyld, aged 15, at the wheel.
9. In 1954 she was moved to a custom-built dry-dock at Greenwich. Her last ever journey was when she was towed there. Her final captain was Captain C.E. Irving, who had sailed the world three times in Cutty Sark before he was 17. At the time of this voyage, he was 83.
10. The Cutty Sark was damaged by a huge fire in 2007, caused, according to the investigation, by an industrial vacuum cleaner which had been left running overnight and had failed. There was no evidence of arson. Restoration work was being carried out at the time, so a lot of the fabric of the ship was off site anyway. Even so the restoration cost £46 million and took five years to complete, with Cutty Sark opening to the public again in 2012. Now, there is a gallery and museum underneath the ship where visitors can view her hull and also a collection of ships' figureheads, donated by Sydney Cumbers in 1953.

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