Among the most famous old sailing ships still extant, Cutty Sark was one of the last clippers built for the China tea trade between the 1840s and 1870s. Ordered by Captain John Willis of London, her hull was of composite construction, with teak planking on iron frames. Her design is thought to have been inspired by Willis's The Tweed, a Bombay-built, full-rigged ship that first sailed as the paddle steamer Punjaub. Cutty Sark's name is Scottish for "short shirt" and comes from the Robert Burns poem "Tam O'Shanter," in which Tam secretly spies on the witch, Nannie, who is clad in a cutty sark; the reasons for Willis's choice of name are obscure. Willis's insistence that only the finest materials be used in the construction of Cutty Sark resulted in the bankruptcy of her builders before the ship was launched, and her completion was overseen by the firm of Denny Brothers, which took over the Scott & Linton yard. Cutty Sark's first years were disappointing to Willis. She never beat her chief rival, Thermopylae, on the passage home from China. Their most dramatic encounter took place in 1872. Loading together at Shanghai, they sailed on the same tide and were neck and neck down the China Sea. About 400 miles ahead of Thermopylae in the Indian Ocean when she lost her rudder in a severe gale, Cutty Sark's crew shipped a makeshift rudder made from spare spars but that too carried away, and they had to fashion a third, with which she completed the 16,000-mile passage in 119 days, behind Thermopylae but with the admiration of all London. The greatest rivalry was not between individual clippers, however, but between clippers and steamships. Using the newly opened Suez Canal, steamers could return from China in only 60 days, thus forcing down the amount the sailing ships could make on their cargoes. By 1871, Cutty Sark was able to charge only £3 per 50 cubic feet of tea, less than half the offer in the years before the canal. Steamships had eased clippers out of the general cargo trade from England, too, and Cutty Sark had to sail first to Australia with a general cargo and then with coal for Shanghai, which gave her two paying cargoes outbound. Even such desperate measures were not enough, and by 1878 clippers were out of the tea trade. Cutty Sark was put to work hauling coal, jute, hemp, wool, and whatever other cargoes were available. She was barely profitable even in general trade because her cargo capacity was small in comparison with the slower, full-bodied sailing ships of the period. In 1878, she loaded coal in Wales for the U.S. Navy in Shanghai. The voyage was a trying one. The first mate killed one of the hands and left the ship at Anjer before he could be brought to trial. (He was later caught, tried in London, and served seven years' penal servitude for manslaughter. Later he returned to sea and retired as master with the Anglo-American Oil Company.) When Cutty Sark was becalmed in the South China Sea, Captain Wallace went mad and leapt overboard. She suffered two more weak captains before coming under command of Captain W. Moore in 1882. After sailing from New York to Semarang with case oil, and then loading such exotic oriental goods as jaggery, myrobalans, and deer horn at Madras, Bimlipatam, and Coconada, she returned to England in 1883. So began her third and most remarkable career. Sailing for Newcastle, Australia, she loaded a cargo of wool and returned home via Cape Horn in the excellent time of 79 days. As with tea, speed was a critical factor in the wool trade because the wool clip in Australia and the auctions in England were held only at specific times of year. On her second voyage, she again made the return in 79 days, the same time as Thermopylae. Moore left the ship and was succeeded by Richard Woodget, who became Cutty Sark's most celebrated master. Except for one more stab at the tea record—aborted because there was no tea to be had—Cutty Sark remained in the wool trade through 1893. Her best run from Sydney to England was 69 days, in 1888, and five years later she overhauled the P & O Line steamer Britannia on her approach to Sydney. Cutty Sark completed her last voyage to Australia in 1895, when she was sold to J. A. Ferreira of Lisbon. As Ferreira she took up work in general trade between Lisbon and the Cape Verde Islands, the Gulf Coast, Caribbean, Brazil, and Portuguese East Africa, with occasional runs to British ports. In 1916 she was dismasted in a hurricane and rerigged as a barkentine. Four years later she was sold to the Cia. de Navegacão de Portugal and renamed Maria di Amparo. In 1922 she put into Falmouth where she was seen by Captain Wilfred Dowman. Later that year, Dowman purchased her and at his own expense brought her back to England where she was renamed Cutty Sark and restored for use as a full-rigged stationary training ship at Falmouth. When Dowman died in 1936, his widow donated the ship to the Thames Nautical Training College and she was moored in the Thames. In 1952, the Cutty Sark Preservation Society came together under the auspices of Frank Carr, director of the National Maritime Museum, and in 1954 she was opened as a museum at Greenwich. Cutty Sark has had tremendous international renown since 1923 when the London vintners Berry Bros. & Rudd, Ltd., named their blended Scotch whiskey Cutty Sark. Two years after the ship opened to the public, Cutty Sark began its sponsorship of tall-ship races of the Sail Training Association (now International Sail Training Association). | 
