Description :: |
Cutty Sark Ship Model Kit
Mantua Model Group have been producing
period model boat kits since after the war and were the first company to innovate
and use the cutting ability of laser beams to produce very accurate and high
quality products.
Mantua are also based in Italy and are also able to supply
very high quality fittings and building materials for the model boat
builder.
Famous English tea clipper, 1869. Built at Dumbarton on Clyde, Scotland, for the new traffic with the Far South East and Africa. She was specifically designed to beat Thermopylae, one of the fastest Clippers ever built.
Among
the most famous old sailing ships still extant, Cutty Sark Ship Model was one of
the last clippers built for the China tea trade. Ordered by Captain
John Willis of London, her hull was of composite construction, with
teak planking on iron frames.
Cutty Sark 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 Sark 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.
Cutty
Sark Ship Model has had tremendous international renown since 1923 when the London
vintners Berry Bros. & Rudd, Ltd., named their blended Scotch
whisky by her name.
Two years after the ship opened to the public, Cutty Sark began her sponsorship of tall-ship races of the International Sail Training Association.
Brettle, Cutty Sark. Fox smith, Return of the Cutty Sark. Lubbock, Log of the Cutty Sark.
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