Maritime history lost as Cutty Sark burns

Maritime history lost as Cutty Sark burns
Email Print Normal font Large font May 22, 2007

LONDON: Fire has ravaged the world's last remaining tea clipper, the Cutty Sark, which helped build Australia's early economy by speeding prized wool shipments to London.

The blaze broke out early yesterday as the 138-year-old ship sat in its dry dock in south London, where it had been undergoing a $60 million restoration.

No one was injured in the blaze and police said there was some evidence the fire was started deliberately. Security camera footage is being checked, and officers appealed for witnesses.

Early reports said damage to the vessel was extensive, but authorities later expressed confidence it could be rebuilt, adding that many crucial artefacts were not aboard because of the restoration work.

The chairman of Cutty Sark Enterprises, Chris Livett, said the decks were lost, but the ship was salvageable and there was much left to work with.

\"The mast, much of the planking, the coach housing and all of the artefacts were not there. We're very, very fortunate … it could have been a lot worse,\" he told BBC radio.

\"It will be the old ship.

\"This is going to make us even more determined to get this ship back up and running and keep her as original as possible.\"

The vessel, which was launched in 1869, had been due to reopen in 2009 once the restoration project was complete.

\"It's a tragedy. She was the Ferrari of the open seas,\" Paddy Pugh, of the conservation body English Heritage, told the BBC. \"It's one of the genuine icons of London.\"

The Cutty Sark was originally used to deliver tea from China. When steamers took over the tea trade, the Cutty Sark turned to general trading, which included transporting many shipments of Australian wool to London markets in the last years of the century, when the national economy rode heavily on the sheep's back.

The ship has been in dry dock in Greenwich since 1954.

The chief executive of the Cutty Sark Trust, Richard Doughty, expressed shock at the fire.

\"When you lose the original fabric, you lose the touch of the craftsmen. You lose history itself,\" he said. \"What is special about Cutty Sark is the timber, the iron frames, that went to the South China Sea.\"

Agence France-Presse, Reuters, Press Association