New Sails For The Cutty Sark

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30390, 14 March 1964, Page 10

New Sails For The Cutty Sark

I From the London Correspondent of “The Press"]

EJECTIONS of flax canvas similar to the sailcloth she orginally used were recently presented to the Cutty Sark, one of the most famous of clipper ships, at her final resting place near the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, near London. The Cutty Sark annually attracts a quarter-of-a-million visitors who will henceforward be able to see and handle the canvas, which, at 18| ounces a yard cloth, is one of several approved weights for sailing ships.

The 963-ton Cutty Sark was launched from Scott and Linton’s shipyard at Dumbarton, on the Clyde on the afternoon of Monday, November 23, 1869. With dimensions of 212 ft in length, 36ft in beam, and with a depth of 21ft she was not a big ship, even by the standards of the times. The clipper was built for Captain Jock Willis, a London ship-owner of Scottish descent, whose ambition was to gain the “Blue Riband” of the sea, in those days, by winning the annual tea clipper race home from China. He commissioned a young Scottish designer, Hercules Linton, for the task. The craft Willis required was one capable of beating the much-praised Thermopylae—a clipper launched the previous year. Genius Of Design The Cutty Sark was outstanding principally for the genius of her lines, which gave her the almost unbelievable speed of 17 knots; for the structure Of her hull —a composite construction of iron and wood that has remained essentially sound; and for the functional perfection of her rig in the trade for which she was designed. She was launched by the wife of her first master, Captain George Moodie. The ship, under Moodie, a competent and conscientious seaman; but never a real “driver,” disappointed Willis as a tea clipper, for it failed to win the race for him. The opening, in 1869, of the Suez Canal—a shorter passage of which ttie clipper ships could not take advan-tage-enabled steamers by the late ’seventies to capture the tea trade. The Cutty Sark was forced to seek other cargoes. In 1872, Captain Moodie

was replaced by Captain F. W. Moore, a man celebrated more for the condition of his ships than for his driving force. Again the Blue Riband evaded owner Willis’s grasp. The next year Moore was succeeded by Captain W. E. Tiptaft, a competent enough master, but one who again lacked the qualities of a really hard driver. With him, therefore, the ship made good, but not exceptional, passages. In December, 1873, carrying a general cargo, she sailed on her first voyage under his command. It was also her first voyage to Sydney, where she loaded coal for Shanghai. On arrival, she was sent up the Yangtze to Hankow, a

hazardous trip at times, and justified only because of the increasing difficulty of getting tea cargoes for a sailing ship. In 1877, the last year in which clippers could afford to pay a dividend on tea, the Cutty Sark caried her last tea cargo from China. Next year Captain Tiptaft died at Shanghai, where he had been trying to increase the meagre cargo obtained at Hankow. Then came a succession of captains. With a considerably-cut down sail plan, shortened yards, and no stun-sails—-modifications effected in 1880 —came a change in her fortune. In 1883, she was first put into the Australian wool

trade, and showed what she could do with an extremely swift passage home from New South Wales to Deal in 82 days. It was as a wool clipper that the Cutty Sark really came into her own, out-sailed all rivals, the great Thermopylae included, and made her name famous throughout the world.

Two years later, in 1885, she got the master whom she really deserved in Captain Richard Woodget, the son of a Norfolk farmer, a man hitherto unknown, who had served Willis since 1881 commanding an old ship, the Coldstream.

Woodget had learned his seamanship the hard way, as a hand in the East Coast “billyboys,” round-sterned coasters with leeboards. Never have a ship and her captain been more happily or more successfully wedded. Woodget was a driver, and the Cutty Sark liked to be driven. He was a genius at getting tire best willingly out of both his ship and his crew; and, with the wonderful sailing qualities of the ship, the combination proved unbeatable. Exceptional Runs After two exceptionally fine passages on the Australian wool run, Willis decided to try again for a tea cargo from China. But Woodget found the steamers completely dominant. After waiting three and a half fruitless months, he sailed for Sydney in ballast, arriving just too late for the January wool sales. He waited till March for wool, and then brought the Cutty Sark home in 72 days, the fastest voyage of the year. The Thermoplylae took 15 days longer. In the years that preceded her sale to Portugal in 1895. the Cutty Sark maintained her superiority over her rivals, apart from the Nebo, days ahead. The final race between the Cutty Sark and her Aberdeen rival, Thermopylae, which, in 1889, finished two was in 1890, when the latter was sold to a Canadian, and finished her trading days carrying rice. On the Cutty Sark’s arrival in London in 1895, much to Captain Woodget’s disgust, Willis sold her to the Portuguese. Willis gave Woodget anoher ship, but he made only one voyage in her. His heart still with the Cutty Sark, he retired from the sea. The Cutty Sark, renamed tfie Ferriera, and registered

at Lisborn, roamed the seas for 26 more years, during which she lost her rudder twice. In 1916, she was dismasted and towed to safety. War-time conditions made it impossible to re-rig her as a ship, and from lack of spars she had to be reduced to a barquentine. She remained a barquentine. until Captain Wilfred Dowman, of Falmouth, and his wife in 1922 bought her back from the Portuguese, only a few months after she had been resold to another Portuguese firm and renamed Maria do Amparo. On Captain Dowman’s death in 1936, the Cutty Sark, re-rigged and restored to all the former glory of her China-clipper days, was presented by his widow to the Thames Nautical Training College, where she joined H.M.S. Worcester as a training ship. No longer required for training purposes, she was handed over, in May, 1953, as a gift to the Cutty Sark Preservation Society, formed under the patronage of the Duke of Edinburgh to restore and maintain her in perpetuity, so that she might occupy a place in the story of the Merchant Navy comparable with that held by Nelson’s Victory in file Navy.