Cutty Sark

Why it matters

The Cutty Sark was born obsolete. She launched in 1869, the same year the Suez Canal opened and killed the tea clipper trade in a single stroke. Steam ships could use the canal. Sailing ships couldn't. The entire economic logic that justified building a vessel optimized for speed from China to London evaporated before she'd completed her first season. That's either terrible timing or a fitting monument to an era that was already dead.

She raced in the tea trade anyway for a few seasons, most famously against the clipper Thermopylae in 1872. Cutty Sark was winning when she lost her rudder in a gale and had to jury-rig a replacement from spare spars. She still finished the voyage, arriving in London only a week behind Thermopylae. That tells you everything about the ship and the men who sailed her.

Her second life was in the Australian wool trade, and this is where she finally proved herself. Under Captain Richard Woodget (1885-1895), she became the fastest wool clipper afloat, consistently making the passage from Sydney to London in under 80 days. She'd load over 5,000 bales of wool, drive south into the roaring forties, and run her easting down at speeds that left every other sailing vessel behind. Woodget was the captain she deserved.

The name comes from Robert Burns's 1791 poem "Tam o' Shanter." Tam, drunk and riding home, watches witches dance and shouts in admiration at a young witch wearing a cutty sark, a short nightgown. She chases him. He barely escapes. The ship's figurehead is the witch Nannie, reaching forward with arm outstretched. It's a perfect name for a ship that was always chasing something just out of reach.

After the wool trade declined, she was sold to a Portuguese company, renamed Ferreira, and spent decades hauling cargo in the South Atlantic. A retired sea captain named Wilfred Dowman found her in a Portuguese port in 1922, recognized what she was, bought her, and brought her home to England. Without Dowman, she would have been broken up. She is the only clipper ship that survives.

What it was like

A crew of 28 to 35 men worked a ship carrying over 32,000 square feet of canvas. That's a brutal ratio. Every man had to be able to work aloft, and in the Southern Ocean, "aloft" meant climbing frozen ratlines to yards 150 feet above a deck that was rolling through 40-foot swells. The wind down in the roaring forties didn't just blow. It screamed. Men shouted into each other's ears and couldn't be heard.

The wool run was the hardest sailing on earth. The route from Sydney to London ran south to pick up the westerlies, then east across the Southern Ocean, around Cape Horn, and north through the Atlantic. Weeks of unbroken gales, freezing spray, and grey skies. The ship would heel until the lee rail was underwater, and the watch on deck worked in water up to their knees. Below decks was marginally drier but the motion was violent enough to throw men from their hammocks.

The small crew meant long watches and no rest during heavy weather. When all hands were called, every man went on deck regardless of whether he'd slept. Injuries were constant: rope burns, crushed fingers from blocks, broken ribs from falls. The food was adequate but monotonous. Captain Woodget was a fair commander who kept his crew fed and didn't drive them past the breaking point, which is why he kept the same men voyage after voyage. Good captains were remembered by their crews. Bad ones were remembered differently.

The crew

Patina notes

Cutty Sark's composite construction tells a complicated preservation story. The iron frames are original but have been extensively treated for corrosion.

The teak planking is a mix of original and replacement timber. The copper sheathing below the waterline has been stripped and conserved. The ship spent decades in salt water at Greenwich before being placed in permanent dry dock in 1954, which slowed but didn't stop deterioration.

The 2007 arson fire during restoration was devastating, burning through much of the surviving original planking above the waterline. The rebuilders used the fire as an opportunity to do structural work that would have been impossible otherwise.

About 90% of the original iron framing survived the fire. The ship you see today is real but restored, a 157-year-old vessel that has been rebuilt enough times to trigger the ship of Theseus question.

Preservation reality

Cutty Sark sits in permanent dry dock at Greenwich, London, under a dramatic glass canopy that lets you walk beneath her copper-clad hull. The restoration after the 2007 fire cost over £50 million and took five years.

The ship was raised 11 feet above the dock floor, creating a museum space underneath where you can look up at the hull lines that made her fast. The interior is restored to the wool-trade era under Captain Woodget.

You can walk the main deck, look into the crew quarters, and stand at the wheel. The collection of merchant ship figureheads in the lower hold is the largest in the world.

It's the best-preserved clipper ship on earth because it's the only one. Admission is about £18. The gift shop is predictable. Go anyway. Stand under that hull and understand that this thing went around the world.

Where to see one

• • Cutty Sark, Greenwich, London, England

Preservation organizations

• • Royal Museums Greenwich
• • Cutty Sark Trust