⚓  CUTTY SARK  ⚓

clipper 1869

(from Wikipedia...)

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 2011. The Cutty Sark is one of only three remaining original 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.
The Cutty Sark was designed by Hercules Linton and built in 1869 at Dumbarton, Scotland, by the firm of Scott & Linton, for Captain John "Jock" "White Hat" Willis expressly to outsail the clipper Thermopylae. 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 gray 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.

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Rövid történet

1869. november 22-én bocsátottak vízre a Clyde-on, a Scott és Linton hajókikötőnél Dumbartonnál egy 963 tonnás csodálatos vitorlás hajót, a Cutty Sark-ot. Ez a hajó óriási hírnevet szerzett az egész világon, belopva magát a brit matrózok szívébe, akárcsak Nelson admirális halhatatlan Victory nevű hajója…
John Rennie grafikus készítette el számára a hajózási útvonalat, figyelembe véve a hajó hihetetlen képességeit. Ez a terv olyan adatok alapján készült, ami majd 3 km2 vitorlafelülettel, 17 csomó feletti maximális sebességgel, valamint egy 3000 lóerős motorral kalkulált.
1870 februárjában a hajó már a tervezett útvonalon közlekedett. Mire a Cutty Sark megjelent a tengeren, a teakereskedelmet addig bonyolító kínai vitorlás hajók napjai meg voltak számlálva, bár még nem sejtették balsorsukat. Akkoriban nyílt meg ugyanis a Szuezi-csatorna, mely óriási előnyt biztosított a gőzösöknek, hiszen a sokkal rövidebb utat rövidebb idő alatt járhatták meg, míg a vitorlásoknak továbbra is meg kellett kerülniük a Jóreménység-fokát.
A Cutty Sark azon kevés túlélő vitorlás hajók egyike, melyek Angliából világszerte szállítottak árut. Ez a hajó egyben emléket állít társainak.

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History

The Cutty Sark was launched on November 22, 1869, and after Scott & Linton was liquidated she was completed by William Denny & Brothers for John Willis & Son.
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 to arrive with the first tea of the year. In the most famous race, against Thermopylae in 1872, both ships left Shanghai together on June 18, but two weeks later Cutty Sark lost her rudder after passing through the Sunda Strait, and arrived in London on October 18, a week after Thermopylae, a total passage of 122 days. Her legendary reputation is supported by the fact that her captain chose to continue this race with an improvised rudder instead of putting into port for a replacement, yet was beaten by only one week.
In 1890, she was taken out of the tea races and cut down to save money for general cargo carrying. The life of a sailor on fast sailing ships was no picnic at the best of times, but the incredible events of her next voyage, 1890-91, occupy an entire chapter in "The Log of the Cutty Sark" (Basil Lubbock, 1924) and formed the base of Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Sharer". A mate so brutal the London crew deserted at first port leaving only the bound apprentices; a superb captain who drove his ship just short of 2,000 km in 72 hours, but committed suicide when the crew mutinied after he allowed the mate to escape after killing one of them; a stop in the shadow of Krakatoa only two years before it exploded; a replacement captain and mate who were each worse than the original mate even when sober; four months ashore at Calcutta over Christmas; cholera; a second mutiny in all but name; another murder by the new mate; running out of provisions.
She recovered her reputation under Captain Richard Woodget, winning the wool race 10 years out of 10 (and beating Thermopylae every time they met[citation needed]). She posted Australia-to-Britain times of as little as 67 days, and in one instance outsailed the fastest steamship there was then, RMS Britannia. Her best run, 360 nautical miles (666 km) in 24 hours (an average 15 kn (28 km/h)), was said to have been the fastest of any ship of her size.
In the end, of course, clippers lost out to steamships, which could pass through the recently opened Suez Canal and deliver goods more reliably, if not quite so quickly, which proved to be better for business. So, in 1895 Willis sold her to the Portuguese firm Ferreira and she was renamed Ferreira after the firm, although her crews referred to her as Pequena Camisola ("little shirt", a straight translation of the Scots "cutty sark"). In 1916 she was dismasted off the Cape of Good Hope, sold, re-rigged in Cape Town as a barquentine, and renamed Maria do Amparo. In 1922 she was bought by Captain Wilfred Dowman, who restored her to her original appearance and used her as a stationary training ship in Greenhithe, Kent. In 1954 she was moved to a custom-built dry-dock at Greenwich.
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

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