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Cutty Sark’s keel was laid at the Dumbarton yard of Scott, Linton & Co early in 1869, and the ship was launched in November of that year. Hercules Linton, who had designed her, drove his company into bankruptcy in obeying his client’s instructions to build her of nothing but the finest materials, and she was taken over for completion by one of the other Clyde yards, William Denny and Brothers. Even as she was sliding down the ways, so was she sliding into obsolescence. On the 17th day of that same month the Suez Canal had opened, cutting the distance to the Far East by almost a third – but only for steamships – and dooming the clipper trade at a stroke. Nonetheless, on 15 February 1870, Cutty Sark left The Downs bound for China. She crossed the equator 25 days out and picked up the Shanghai pilot on 31 May, just 104 days after leaving the United Kingdom. After 25 days in the Chinese port, loading tea, she set sail for home, arriving on 13 October, after a passage of 110 days. In all, Cutty Sark had eight years in the tea trade, her best passage being in the second of them, when she made the voyage home in 107 days, pilot to pilot. Most of the tea clippers dropped out of the trade over the next decade, unable to compete with fast steamships sailing a shorter route, and Cutty Sark was amongst them. After some years in general trade she found a new niche, carrying general cargo from Britain’s factories out to Australia, and raw wool back, once making the trip in 69 days. Then, in 1895, she was sold to a Portuguese owner and operated under that country’s flag (as the Ferreira, and later as the Maria do Amparo) for 27 years, most of them rigged as a barquentine. In 1922, after refitting in London, Cutty Sark put in to Falmouth to wait out a Channel gale; there she caught the eye of a retired windjammer skipper named Captain Wilfred Downman, who bought her for £3750. When he died, in 1936, his widow presented the vessel to the Thames Nautical Training College, and she was moored on the river at Greenhithe, not far from the spot where her greatest voyages had ended. In 1949, no longer required as a training ship, she was retired, and public subscription eventually secured her preservation, in a specially built dry dock close to Britain’s National Maritime Museum, at Greenwich. Fittingly, her nearest neighbour is Gypsy Moth IV, the boat Sir Francis Chichester sailed around the world single-handed to see if modern technology could produce a boat to emulate the old clipper ships’ runs.

Tonnage: 963 grt

Dimensions: 212ft 6in x 36ft x 21ft (64.8m x 11m x 6.4m)

Machinery: not applicable

Service speed: not applicable

Role: tea carrier; general cargo vessel

Route: China–London; London–Australia–London

Constructor: Scott, Linton & Co, Dumbarton; Wm Denny & Bros, Glasgow

Material: composite, wood on iron

Built for: John Willis

Owner: Cutty Sark Maritime Trust

Pictured 1: Cutty Sark’s name was taken from a poem by Robert Burns, Tam O’Shanter. Tam, a Scottish farmer, was chased by the pretty young witch Nannie, who wore nothing but ‘a cutty sark’ – a short petticoat. It is the witch Nannie who appears as the ship’s figurehead, her left arm outstretched, eternally reaching for the tail of Tam’s grey mare.

Pictured 2: Cutty Sark’s fame is due in no small part to the fact that she was preserved and returned to her original condition; she looks today exactly as she did in 1870, before setting out on her maiden voyage to Shanghai in ballast.