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How Cutty Sark Became the Fastest Sail-Powered Cargo Ship Ever Built
Standing proud on the bank of the Thames, a half-mile from the Prime Meridian, is one of Britain’s most famous ships: the Cutty Sark. She is the fastest sail-powered cargo ship ever built, nowadays poised in permanent dry dock at Greenwich, the locus of British maritime science.
It was at the height of Britain’s global, imperial power that Cutty Sark embarked on treacherous journeys across the world’s biggest oceans. Not only was she the fastest vessel of her day, but she could carry a million pounds of tea from China to Britain to quench the thirst of the Victorian public. Vessels like the Cutty Sark were a central plank in Britain’s expanding networks of trade and commerce, which drove the empire’s growth in the 19th century.
By 1901, the year Queen Victoria died, the British empire embraced 12 million square miles of the globe. British merchants also thronged the wharves of ports outside of Britain’s possession, as in China, Syria and South America.
Photographed by Green, Allan C., 1926.Image Credit: State Library Victoria / Public Domain
The goods these ships carried introduced Victorians to new products: tea from China and India; coffee from the Middle East; spices from Southeast Asia; textiles from Egypt; timber from Canada; and frozen meats from Australia and New Zealand.
These arrived as raw commodities from Britain’s colonies, and returned as manufactured goods, protected on the high seas by the Royal Navy. Although British merchant vessels had the Navy’s protection, they could not afford complacency when it came to speed and efficiency. Key to Cutty Sark’s fame and success was the state-of-the-art technology with which she was outfitted.
State-of-the-art
At the time, competing fleets utilised whatever technological advantages were available in order to dominate trade and commodities. Among the Cutty Sark’s forest of sheets and halyards is evidence of significant changes in shipbuilding.
Cutty Sark’s hull is among the sharpest among tea clippers, meaning it required ballast for stability when unladen. Constructed from teak above the waterline, rock elm below and with a keel of pitch pine, it also featured metal sheeting over its hull. This kept the hull cleaner, so it sailed faster. It also had a wrought-iron frame to which all external timbers were secured by bolts. This made it stronger and less susceptible to leaks which would occupy valuable crew time to remedy.
“To maintain their edge, shipbuilders and architects are having to pioneer and innovate new technologies and techniques of shipbuilding,” explains Max Wilson, Senior Archivist at Lloyd’s Register Foundation, a public-facing library and archive holding material concerning over 260 years of marine and engineering science and history.
which possesses one of the best archives of ships and ship-building in the world. “We see this starkly over the 19th century.”
A plan and survey report for the Cutty Sark.Image Credit: Lloyd's Register Foundation
Designers aimed to maximise the speed of cargo delivery, harness cargo carrying capacity to bolster the safety of passengers and goods, and to increase the number of journeys ships could undertake. Ultimately, they aimed to increase their share of the merchant trade.
Victorian sensation
Cutty Sark was built by John Willis in Scotland in 1869 against a backdrop of great transformations in shipbuilding. Shipbuilding moved northwards in Britain, while motive power was shifting from wind to steam and wood construction was being replaced with iron and composite solutions.
As the ‘age of sail’ threatened to pass into memory, the Cutty Sark was a last throw of the dice. In 1840 steam ships made up about 4 percent of Britain’s merchant fleet: by around 1870, this had grown to around 20 percent. By 1890, this would be around 75 percent. The Cutty Sark was built as a way to demonstrate the power of sail and wind against steam power.
“The sailing ships were still very reliable at that time,” says Zach Schieferstein, Archivist at Lloyd’s Register Foundation. “Ships like the Cutty Sark that were built for a purpose of transporting tea were built for speed and travelling long distances, getting the first tea of the season ready to sell for those high premiums.”
The Cutty Sark’s fastest recorded speed was 17.5 knots, considerable for a container ship, and the furthest she travelled in a 24-hour period was around 350 nautical miles. “It wasn’t uncommon to make the journey from Shanghai to ports in Britain in about 100 to 120 days. For the time, it was really setting records.”
Helping her rack up these miles were 32 sails, which could stretch over 32,000 square feet, suspended on 11 miles of rigging. She carried an average of 26 crew and was larger than clippers that had come before: with a gross tonnage of 963, a length of 212.5 feet, breadth of 36 feet and depth of 21 feet.
Cutty Sark traded between China, Australia, later to South Africa and South America, and for a while held the record for journeying between Australia and Britain. Over the course of the century, tea had emerged as the national drink and the Cutty Sark became associated with tea races. The annual tea race was a Victorian sensation. A premium or bonus was paid to the ship that arrived with the first tea of the year. Clipper ships like Cutty Sark raced from China’s tea ports to London to fetch the highest price for its cargo. In 1866’s so-called ‘great tea race’, the progress of ships was reported by telegraph and followed in the papers, with bets placed on the outcome.
First-rate
In this period there was a simultaneous explosion in the service industries attached to shipping.
For example, Edward Lloyd’s Coffee House had become known as the meeting place in the City for those seeking shipping intelligence. A committee called The Register Society, made up of underwriters and brokers, ship-owners and merchants who associated through Lloyd’s coffee house, was formed in 1760. The Register Book published by the Society, later to become Lloyd’s Register, provided critical information on vessel seaworthiness which was critical for merchants and underwriters assessing the risks of any one voyage. This was the true beginning of classification and Lloyd’s Register as the first classification society which now possesses a vast archive and library.
In 1760, merchants who met at Edward Lloyd’s London coffee shop established the Society for the Registry of Shipping. From 1764, it funded surveyors to list, rate and class the condition of vessels. This was the origin of the world’s first classification society in Lloyd’s Register, which today possesses one of the best archives of ships and ship-building in the world.
“It was born out of this desire to have reliable and up-to-date information on merchant shipping,” explains Schieferstein, “and to make it safer as well, for passengers, for cargo and for the crew.”
The first mention of the Cutty Sark in the Register Book, from the supplements section of the 1869 Register Book.Image Credit: Lloyd's Register Foundation
Lloyd’s Register’s surveyors would assess a ship, using “A1” from 1768 to indicate a ship of the highest class. they thereby introduced the term “first rate” to denote quality. Cutty Sark was given this A1 rating.
Continuing developments in steam technology resulted in the sale of Cutty Sark, to serve first as a Portuguese cargo ship, and later as a training vessel in Cornwall and on the Thames. It was towed into its current dry dock in 1953 to become one of the nation’s most treasured heritage sites, whose story becomes richer with the documents and records collated by Lloyd’s Register Foundation.
You can find out more about the history of Lloyd’s Register Foundation and their work supporting research, innovation and education to help the global community tackle the most pressing safety and risk challenges at www.lrfoundation.org.uk
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