Cutty Sark: The Clipper That Floats on Glass
Why is it significant?
Walk right round the black hull until you can see underneath her... yes, underneath, because this ship floats on nothing but air and glass.
Key Facts
| Place | Cutty Sark: The Clipper That Floats on Glass |
|---|---|
| Address | King William Walk, London SE10 9HT, United Kingdom |
| Geo Coordinates | 51.48290, -0.00960 |
| Part of Walk | Under the Thames to Longitude Zero: Maritime Greenwich, London |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk right round the black hull until you can see underneath her... yes, underneath, because this ship floats on nothing but air and glass. The Cutty Sark sits raised about three metres above the floor of her dry dock, so you can stand beneath the gleaming metal-sheathed keel of a ship that raced across every ocean on earth.
She was launched in 1869 at Dumbarton on the River Clyde, built to bring the new season's tea from China as fast as the wind allowed, because the first cargo to reach London fetched the best price. And here is the cruel joke of her life: in that very same year, the Suez Canal opened. Steamships could now take the short cut through Egypt, where sailing ships could not easily follow, and within a few years the great tea races were over. The finest clipper of her age was out of date almost from the day she was born.
She found her glory in another cargo instead: wool from Australia. Under Captain Richard Woodget, in the late 1880s and early 1890s, she made some of the fastest passages of her day and famously showed her stern to steamers. Then she was sold to Portuguese owners in 1895 and sailed for decades under another name, Ferreira, until a retired sea captain, Wilfred Dowman, bought her back in 1922. Since 1954 she has rested here in Greenwich.
On 21 May 2007, during a long conservation project, fire swept through the ship. The pictures on the news looked like the end. But much of her original timber and ironwork had already been taken away for repair, so most of the historic fabric survived. She reopened in 2012, lifted into the air on her new steel supports, which still divide opinion among sailors and architects.
Before you go, find the figurehead: a woman in a short white shift, one arm stretched out. She is Nannie, the witch from Robert Burns's poem Tam o' Shanter, and cutty sark is old Scots for that short shift. In the poem she grabs the tail of Tam's mare as he gallops away, and the story goes that sailors would put a tail of old rope in her hand. Now head south, past the market streets, to the great stone church with giant columns on Greenwich Church Street.