On the Water

We took the London Transport River Bus from Westminster to Greenwich to visit the Cutty Sark, which is in dry dock there. It must be 50 years since I last went on board.

Built in 1869 in Scotland, the Cutty Sark was one of the last tea clippers built and one of the fastest. Her maximum logged speed was 17.5 knots (20.1 mph). The ship was named for the witch Nannie Dee in Robert Burns's 1791 poem “Tam o' Shanter,” whose nickname was Cutty-sark.

Cutty Sark is now a museum ship. Once on board, we visited the crew quarters, galley, and the hold where the chests of tea and later bales of wool were stored for transport. The various exhibits inside the ship included replicas of the kind of food that would have been cooked in the galley for the surprisingly small crew of 26. Ship’s biscuits looked especially unappetizing. The crew kept chickens and pigs on board for eggs and meat.

After a fire in 2007 and restoration, the hull was sheathed in copper alloy and the entire ship lifted three metres above the dry dock. Under a glass ceiling from which the part of the ship that would have been under water rises, there is a gift shop; and under that are a café and museum space housing the largest collection of merchant navy figureheads in the world, the Long John Silver collection. Because of his interest in all things maritime and the eye-patch he wore, having lost an eye in a childhood accident, Sydney Cumbers, the collector and donor, assumed the pseudonym of Captain Long John Silver.

Among the 93 figureheads are those of many famous people, real and imaginary. Among them: Sir Lancelot, Hiawatha, Garibaldi, Florence Nightingale, Abraham Lincoln, William Gladstone, and -- of course -- Nannie Dee herself, the white bare-breasted figure holding the gray horse's tail.Read more