• Overall dimensions: 20" long x 4" W x 17" H (1:190 scale)
• Our Cutty Sark Tea Clipper is made with plank on frame construction (a painstaking process where each individual plank is added to the hull one at a time).
• This Tea Clipper is built with rare, high quality woods such as southwest cherry, white orchis wood, birch, maple and rosewood.
• The model rests perfectly on a scale wooden base.
• Our Cutty Sark has masterfully stitched canvas sails authentic to the real Cutty Sark
• To build this ship, extensive research was done using various sources such as museums, drawings, copies of original plans and photos of the actual ship.

The Cutty Sark is a clipper ship. Built in 1869, she served as a merchant vessel (the last clipper to be built for that purpose), and then as a training ship until being put on public display in 1954. She is preserved in dry dock at Greenwich in London, but was damaged in a fire on May 21, 2007 while undergoing extensive restoration.

Etymology

The ship is named after the cutty sark (Scots: a short chemise or undergarment). This was the nickname of the fictional character Nannie (also the name of the ship's figurehead) in Robert Burns' 1791 comic poem Tam o' Shanter. She was wearing a linen cutty sark that she had been given as a child, therefore it was far too small for her. The erotic sight of her dancing in such a short undergarment caused Tam to cry out "Weel done, Cutty-sark", which subsequently became a well known idiom.

History

She was designed by Hercules Linton and built in 1869 at Dumbarton, Scotland, by the firm of Scott & Linton, for Captain John "Jock" "White Hat" Willis; Scott & Linton was liquidated, and she was launched November 22nd of that year by William Denny & Brothers.

Cutty Sark was destined for the tea trade, then an intensely competitive race across the globe from China to London, with immense profits to the ship to arrive with the first tea of the year. However, she did not distinguish herself; in the most famous race, against Thermopylae in 1872, both ships left Shanghai together on June 18th, but two weeks later Cutty Sark lost her rudder after passing through the Sunda Strait, and arrived in London on October 18th, a week after Thermopylae, a total passage of 122 days. Her legendary reputation is supported by the fact that her captain chose to continue this race with an improvised rudder instead of putting into port for a replacement, yet was only beaten by one week.

In the end, clippers lost out to steamships, which could pass through the recently-opened Suez Canal and deliver goods more reliably, if not quite so quickly, which proved to be better for business. Cutty Sark was then used on the Australian wool trade. Under the respected Captain Richard Woodget, she did very well, posting Australia-to-Britain times of as little as 67 days. Her best run, 360 nautical miles (666 km) in 24 hours (an average 15 kn (28 km/h), was said to have been the fastest of any ship of her size.

In 1895 Willis sold her to the Portuguese firm Ferreira and she was renamed Ferreira after the firm, although her crews referred to her as Pequena Camisola ("little shirt", a straight translation of the Scots "cutty sark"). In 1916 she was dismasted off the Cape of Good Hope, sold, re-rigged in Cape Town as a barquentine, and renamed Maria do Amparo. In 1922 she was bought by Captain Wilfred Dowman, who restored her to her original appearance and used her as a stationary training ship. In 1954 she was moved to a custom-built dry-dock at Greenwich.

Cutty Sark is also preserved in literature in Hart Crane's long poem "The Bridge" which was published in 1930.

Museum ship

The Cutty Sark was preserved as a museum ship and popular tourist attraction. She is located near the centre of Greenwich, in south-east London, close aboard the National Maritime Museum, the former Greenwich Hospital, and Greenwich Park. She is also a prominent landmark on the route of the London Marathon. She usually flies signal flags from her ensign halyard reading "JKWS", which is the code representing Cutty Sark in the International Code of Signals, introduced in 1857.

The ship is in the care of the Cutty Sark Trust, whose president, the Duke of Edinburgh, was instrumental in ensuring her preservation, when he set up the Cutty Sark Society in 1951. The Trust replaced the Society in 2000. She is a Grade I listed monument and is on the Buildings At Risk Register.

Cutty Sark station on the Docklands Light Railway is one minute's walk away, with connections to central London and the London Underground. Greenwich Pier is next to the ship, and is served by scheduled river boats from piers in central London. A tourist information office stands to the east of the ship.
hip, meaning that the Trust had now achieved £30 million of the £35 million needed for the completion of the project.

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