Cutty Sarks name is short Scottish for short shirt and comes
from the Robert Burns poem Tam OShanter. The reason for his choice
of name is not known.
Willis insistence that only the finest materials be used in the construction of the
Cutty Sark resulted in the bankruptcy of her original builders. Denny Brothers, who took over their yard, then oversaw her completion.
Even though she lost one of her most dramatic encounters with her main
rival, Thermopylae, she still acquired the admiration of London, for
the persistence of her crew. She completed a 16,000-mile journey in one
hundred and nineteen days, by no means an illustrious feat; the
admiration was the inventiveness of her crew in building makeshift
rudders twice, as she had lost her rudder in severe gales.
The advent of the steamships and the opening of the Suez Canal meant
that clippers were no longer economic, and by 1878, clippers were out
of the tea trade. A number of unfortunate accidents happened on board
the ship between 1878 and 1883. These included a murder and one of her
Captains (Captain Wallace) going mad and jumping overboard.
In 1883 however, things were about to change for the clipper ship. She
did the return journey from England to Australia (under Captain W.
Moore) with a cargo of wool through the Cape of Good Hope in
seventy-nine days. As with the tea trade, speed was also a critical
factor for the wool trade.
Richard Woodget, who became Cutty Sarks most celebrated master,
succeeded Moore. Her best run was in 1888, where she did the journey in
sixty-nine days, shaving an amazing ten days off her previous record.
She completed her last journey to Australia in 1895, and was sold to J.
A. Ferreira of Lisbon. Four years later, she was again sold to the Cia
de Navegacao de Portugal and was renamed Maria di Amparo.
In 1922, she was in Falmouth, when Captain Wilfred Dowman spotted her.
Later that year, he purchased the ship at his own expense and brought
her back to England and re-named her by her famous name. She was
restored for use as a full-rigged training ship at Falmouth.
When Dowman died in 1936, his widow donated the ship to the Thames
Nautical Training College. In 1952, the Cutty Sark Preservation Society
came together under the auspices of Frank Carr, Director of the
National Maritime Museum. Finally in 1954, she was opened as a museum
at Greenwich.
Two years after the ship opened to the public,
Cutty Sark began her sponsorship of tall-ship races of the International Sail Training Association.
