Clipper ships were the “race cars” of sailing ships. The short and narrow ships were sometimes called “Yankee clippers” due to their development on the east coast of the United States in the early part of the 19th century. Clippers were the ship of choice for low-volume, high-value cargoes. If you needed travel from Baltimore to Buenos Aires as quickly as possible, or you needed to send a cargo of spices from Bombay to London in weeks not months, clipper ships were the way to go. The very first clipper ship, the Annie McKim, was built in Baltimore in 1833, and by 1854 clipper ships were routinely breaking speed records. In that year, the clipper ship Sovereign of the Seas traveled at a sustained speed of 22 knots (25 mph), the fastest speed ever recorded for a sailing vessel.
One of the most famous of all the clipper ships was Cutty Sark. Built in 1869 at Dumbarton, Scotland, the ship lived her life in the tea trade. Her claim to fame is that she raced another ship, the Thermopylae, from Shanghai to London in 1872. Although the Cutty Sark lost the race, she nevertheless gained fame when she lost her rudder in the Sunda Strait two weeks into the race. The plucky captain decided to plow ahead with an improvised rudder, and the Cutty Sark made it to London only a week after the Thermopylae, even though she was severely disabled.
In 1895, the Cutty Sark was sold to the Portuguese firm Ferreira and was renamed Ferreira after her new owners, although the crew called her Pequena Camisola, which means “little shirt” and is a direct translation of the Scottish name. In 1922, she was sold to a Captain Wilfred Dowman, who purchased the little vessel to restore it to its former glory and to use as a training vessel. In 1954 she was moved to a dry dock at Greenwich, in south London. For years, the Cutty Sark remained a tourist attraction, being close to the National Maritime Museum, the Royal Observatory, Greenwich Hospital, and Greenwich Park.
Sadly, on May 21, 2007, the ship, which had been undergoing restoration, caught on fire. Although it was feared that the ship might be totally lost, upon further inspection, it appears that much of the ship was not permanently damaged, and much of what was damaged was not original to the 1869 ship.
I mention all this because last week, British police announced that the fire was caused by a vacuum cleaner that had accidentally been left running that weekend. Someone deserves to get fired for this, but it’s at least good news that it was an accident… rather than arson, which was initially suspected.
Currently, there are two petitions about the Cutty Sark before the British Prime Minister: one for funds to restore the ship, and the other for funds to restore the ship into commission as a sail training vessel. As someone that’s seen the Cutty Sark on multiple occasions, as well as stood on the deck of the U.S.S. Constitution (which is still on the US Navy’s roster as an active battleship), I hope that it’s the latter.