The conservation of large historic ships is nearly always costly and contentious, sometimes becoming ever more complicated over the years. The latest scheme to save Cutty Sark, the sole survivor of the elegant Victorian tea clippers, has been more controversial than most.
Recent argument and debate has almost overshadowed the ship’s dramatic early history. She was built at Dumbarton in 1869 for Scottish ship-owner John Willis and her sole purpose was to race China tea back from Shanghai to London’s East India Docks. She was designed for speed, with a long, narrow hull, a sharp bow, raking masts and a huge area of sail.
By the 1890s Cutty Sark’s celebrated but brief career as a fast sailing clipper was over, superseded by steam and the short cut to the far east through the Suez Canal, which was not open to sail.
It was only through sheer luck that she survived middle age as a Portuguese trader and was brought back to Britain as a sail training ship and floating visitor attraction in the 1920s, based at Falmouth.
Towed to the Thames in 1938, Cutty Sark escaped unscathed from the air raids of the London Blitz but after the war was left with no suitable home or owner for preservation.
Frank Carr, the director of London’s National Maritime Museum at the time, was the ship’s principal advocate and saviour. After engaging the support and enthusiasm of the Duke of Edinburgh, he set up the Cutty Sark Preservation Society with HRH as patron. They raised £250,000 for restoration work in a public appeal and created a special dry dock at Greenwich as the ship’s permanent home.
In 1957 the Queen, accompanied by the Duke, opened Cutty Sark and the clipper soon became one of London’s most successful tourist attractions. But the apparent belief that the initial restoration work would preserve the ship forever soon proved over-optimistic.
Deterioration
Cutty Sark is one of only three surviving mid-Victorian vessels of composite construction. The ship’s hull has a wrought-iron framework on to which wooden planks were bolted, sheathed below the waterline in a brass-like metal.
This began to deteriorate further in the open environment of the dry dock at Greenwich. By the 1960s the metal sheathing had to be replaced and a few years later the iron framework began to show signs of decay and structural weakness.
A full survey in the late 1990s concluded that the ship was at risk of disintegration and collapse without major intervention. By this time Cutty Sark had become a much-loved London landmark at Greenwich, rivalling Nelson’s Victory in the iconic national maritime heritage stakes, and a suitable new preservation scheme for the 21st century was essential if the ship was to survive at all.
Fire damage
The Cutty Sark Trust replaced the preservation society in 2000, with the Duke of Edinburgh as president, and a new £25m restoration project, supported by lottery funding, began in 2006.
Even at this early stage, the plans were controversial as a conservation exercise because the proposal involved major structural intervention and alterations to the ship. Steel beams were to be inserted through Cutty Sark’s hull and keel to give it added strength, spread the load and also raise the ship up in the dock by 3.3 metres.
This was an ingenious but previously untried engineering solution intended to relieve the keel of the weight of the ship when it was not floating on water.
The support framework was to prevent any further distortion of the ship’s unique keel shape through its own weight. For display purposes the scheme also planned to give visitors the opportunity to walk right underneath the ship in a glazed museum gallery within the dock itself.
It was a radical proposal that was opposed, or at least questioned, by many people for conservation or aesthetic reasons, or both. But in 2007, only six months after work began, a major fire swept through the ship.
Fortunately, the blaze caused less damage than dramatic news footage of the inferno suggested, but it prompted a new round of public debate about whether the project was worth pursuing at even greater cost.
Some argued that, with more extensive replication of original features now required, why not abandon Cutty Sark’s remains and build a brand new ship that could be sailed as a full-size replica?
The trust countered that less than 5% of the original fabric was lost in the fire, as the decks that were destroyed were later additions and could be replaced.
Also, a lot of material had been removed from the ship when the project started and escaped the flames. Restoration work continued, though costs rose dramatically, eventually doubling to £50m.
But the work was completed in good time for this year’s expected Olympic boost to visitor numbers. When the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh returned to Greenwich in April to reopen Cutty Sark, it was a poignant moment in the ship’s chequered history.
In the words of the trust’s press release, “the project has succeeded in rescuing Cutty Sark and preventing her collapse, whilst preserving as much of the ship’s original fabric from the period of her working life as possible. Moreover, the innovative scheme also provides generations to come with a new way to engage with the ship and explore her history.”
Cutty Sark’s future is now secure within the extended family of Royal Museums Greenwich, which includes the National Maritime Museum.
How well does the ship now work as a visitor experience? Cutty Sark’s upper deck and rigging have been painstakingly restored to their original specification.
There are apparently 11 miles of rigging supporting the three masts, but in dry dock with no sails, it is still difficult to imagine what it was like to be on the weather deck in a high wind on the ocean.
I found the same problem below, where the physical restoration of the ship is immaculate but the interpretative and interactive displays feel a bit dull. Even the experience of having a coffee sitting below the ship’s gleaming keel, while more dramatic than your average museum cafe, is not quite as exciting as it should be.
Plain sailing
In its newly buffed state, Cutty Sark looks brand new and it is hard to believe that this beautiful ship even sailed to Southend, let alone through stormy seas on numerous voyages across the world carrying tea, wool or coal.
I’m not sure what the answer to this problem is, but somehow the restoration needs to have a sense of atmosphere injected through sound, visuals and more dramatic contextual displays.
At present the design and display is rather too low key, tasteful and passive. You feel you could sleep comfortably in the captain’s cabin all the way to Shanghai and never be disturbed by anything. It’s more like a boutique hotel than a tough working environment.
This is a shame, because the Cutty Sark is an important survivor with a wonderful stock of stories and experience, much of it briefly summarised in the excellent guidebook. The interpretation fails to fully bring these out on board the ship itself, which somehow has had the life drained out of it. Building a replica could almost have happened by default.
Is this the real thing or a superbly crafted copy? There is an interesting observation on the website of the Irish Post, which interviewed members of the Byrne Group, the specialist contractor brought in to complete Cutty Sark’s construction work on schedule.
Project manager Kevin Linnane explains that the key to getting Cutty Sark completed on time was “to stop treating it like a ship because it is never going to be put to sea again”. He may well be right, but I still find that rather a sad comment.
Oliver Green is a research fellow at the London Transport Museum
Recent argument and debate has almost overshadowed the ship’s dramatic early history. She was built at Dumbarton in 1869 for Scottish ship-owner John Willis and her sole purpose was to race China tea back from Shanghai to London’s East India Docks. She was designed for speed, with a long, narrow hull, a sharp bow, raking masts and a huge area of sail.
By the 1890s Cutty Sark’s celebrated but brief career as a fast sailing clipper was over, superseded by steam and the short cut to the far east through the Suez Canal, which was not open to sail.
It was only through sheer luck that she survived middle age as a Portuguese trader and was brought back to Britain as a sail training ship and floating visitor attraction in the 1920s, based at Falmouth.
Towed to the Thames in 1938, Cutty Sark escaped unscathed from the air raids of the London Blitz but after the war was left with no suitable home or owner for preservation.
Frank Carr, the director of London’s National Maritime Museum at the time, was the ship’s principal advocate and saviour. After engaging the support and enthusiasm of the Duke of Edinburgh, he set up the Cutty Sark Preservation Society with HRH as patron. They raised £250,000 for restoration work in a public appeal and created a special dry dock at Greenwich as the ship’s permanent home.
In 1957 the Queen, accompanied by the Duke, opened Cutty Sark and the clipper soon became one of London’s most successful tourist attractions. But the apparent belief that the initial restoration work would preserve the ship forever soon proved over-optimistic.
Deterioration
Cutty Sark is one of only three surviving mid-Victorian vessels of composite construction. The ship’s hull has a wrought-iron framework on to which wooden planks were bolted, sheathed below the waterline in a brass-like metal.
This began to deteriorate further in the open environment of the dry dock at Greenwich. By the 1960s the metal sheathing had to be replaced and a few years later the iron framework began to show signs of decay and structural weakness.
A full survey in the late 1990s concluded that the ship was at risk of disintegration and collapse without major intervention. By this time Cutty Sark had become a much-loved London landmark at Greenwich, rivalling Nelson’s Victory in the iconic national maritime heritage stakes, and a suitable new preservation scheme for the 21st century was essential if the ship was to survive at all.
Fire damage
The Cutty Sark Trust replaced the preservation society in 2000, with the Duke of Edinburgh as president, and a new £25m restoration project, supported by lottery funding, began in 2006.
Even at this early stage, the plans were controversial as a conservation exercise because the proposal involved major structural intervention and alterations to the ship. Steel beams were to be inserted through Cutty Sark’s hull and keel to give it added strength, spread the load and also raise the ship up in the dock by 3.3 metres.
This was an ingenious but previously untried engineering solution intended to relieve the keel of the weight of the ship when it was not floating on water.
The support framework was to prevent any further distortion of the ship’s unique keel shape through its own weight. For display purposes the scheme also planned to give visitors the opportunity to walk right underneath the ship in a glazed museum gallery within the dock itself.
It was a radical proposal that was opposed, or at least questioned, by many people for conservation or aesthetic reasons, or both. But in 2007, only six months after work began, a major fire swept through the ship.
Fortunately, the blaze caused less damage than dramatic news footage of the inferno suggested, but it prompted a new round of public debate about whether the project was worth pursuing at even greater cost.
Some argued that, with more extensive replication of original features now required, why not abandon Cutty Sark’s remains and build a brand new ship that could be sailed as a full-size replica?
The trust countered that less than 5% of the original fabric was lost in the fire, as the decks that were destroyed were later additions and could be replaced.
Also, a lot of material had been removed from the ship when the project started and escaped the flames. Restoration work continued, though costs rose dramatically, eventually doubling to £50m.
But the work was completed in good time for this year’s expected Olympic boost to visitor numbers. When the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh returned to Greenwich in April to reopen Cutty Sark, it was a poignant moment in the ship’s chequered history.
In the words of the trust’s press release, “the project has succeeded in rescuing Cutty Sark and preventing her collapse, whilst preserving as much of the ship’s original fabric from the period of her working life as possible. Moreover, the innovative scheme also provides generations to come with a new way to engage with the ship and explore her history.”
Cutty Sark’s future is now secure within the extended family of Royal Museums Greenwich, which includes the National Maritime Museum.
How well does the ship now work as a visitor experience? Cutty Sark’s upper deck and rigging have been painstakingly restored to their original specification.
There are apparently 11 miles of rigging supporting the three masts, but in dry dock with no sails, it is still difficult to imagine what it was like to be on the weather deck in a high wind on the ocean.
I found the same problem below, where the physical restoration of the ship is immaculate but the interpretative and interactive displays feel a bit dull. Even the experience of having a coffee sitting below the ship’s gleaming keel, while more dramatic than your average museum cafe, is not quite as exciting as it should be.
Plain sailing
In its newly buffed state, Cutty Sark looks brand new and it is hard to believe that this beautiful ship even sailed to Southend, let alone through stormy seas on numerous voyages across the world carrying tea, wool or coal.
I’m not sure what the answer to this problem is, but somehow the restoration needs to have a sense of atmosphere injected through sound, visuals and more dramatic contextual displays.
At present the design and display is rather too low key, tasteful and passive. You feel you could sleep comfortably in the captain’s cabin all the way to Shanghai and never be disturbed by anything. It’s more like a boutique hotel than a tough working environment.
This is a shame, because the Cutty Sark is an important survivor with a wonderful stock of stories and experience, much of it briefly summarised in the excellent guidebook. The interpretation fails to fully bring these out on board the ship itself, which somehow has had the life drained out of it. Building a replica could almost have happened by default.
Is this the real thing or a superbly crafted copy? There is an interesting observation on the website of the Irish Post, which interviewed members of the Byrne Group, the specialist contractor brought in to complete Cutty Sark’s construction work on schedule.
Project manager Kevin Linnane explains that the key to getting Cutty Sark completed on time was “to stop treating it like a ship because it is never going to be put to sea again”. He may well be right, but I still find that rather a sad comment.
Oliver Green is a research fellow at the London Transport Museum
Project data
- Cost £50m
- Main funders Heritage Lottery Fund £25m; Sammy Ofer Foundation £3.8m; Department for Culture, Media and Sport; Greenwich Council; Greater London Authority; Stavros Niarchos Foundation; Berry Brothers & Rudd; Michael Edwards; Alisher Usmanov; Garfield Weston Foundation; Sir Michael Cobham; Nicholas Edmiston; Kristian Gerhard Jebsen Foundation; Trinity House
- Principal sponsor HSBC
- Architect Grimshaw
- Structural and conservation engineer Buro Happold
- Mechanical and electrical engineer WSP
- Cost consultant Gardiner & Theobald
- Construction manager and principal contractor Gardiner & Theobald; Ellmer Construction (part of the Byrne Group)
- Exhibition design Designmap; Barry Mazur
- Exhibition fit-out construction manager Fraser Randall
- Exhibition lighting Luminance
- AV hardware Integrated Circles
- Exhibition fit-out (including display cases) The Workhaus
- Graphics production Leach Colour
- Figurehead conservation Richard Rogers Conservation
