Cutty Sark in fire

[PMarione]

Monday, 21 May 2007, 04:54 GMT 05:54 UK BBC World

The famous 19th Century ship the Cutty Sark is "100%" ablaze, the London Fire Brigade has said.
An area around the 138-year-old tea clipper is being evacuated amid fears gas cylinders onboard could explode.
Greenwich town centre in south-east London has been closed to traffic and the Docklands Light Railway shut.
The ship is currently closed to visitors while a 25m p. renovation is carried out. Eight fire engines have been sent to tackle the fire.
Speaking to BBC News the Chief Executive of the Cutty Sark Trust, Richard Doughty, said the fire brigade told him they were treating the fire as suspicious.
A spokeswoman for the brigade said "100%" of the vessel was ablaze and confirmed there were cylinders aboard but their contents had not been named.
Residents living near the ship are being evacuated from their homes and taken to a Greenwich hotel, Scotland Yard confirmed.
The conservation work was being carried out as sea salt had accelerated the corrosion of her iron framework.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/6675381.stm

[PMarione]

Monday, 21 May 2007, 07:12 GMT 08:12 UK BBC World

Police are treating the fire as suspicious
A fire on board the famous 19th Century ship the Cutty Sark is now under control, the London fire brigade said.
An area around the 138-year-old tea clipper was evacuated amid fears that gas cylinders were on board but it has been confirmed that none were present.
Greenwich town centre in south-east London has been closed to traffic and the Docklands Light Railway shut.
Police say they are treating the cause of the fire as suspicious and are currently analysing CCTV images.
The images are believed to show people in the area shortly before the fire started.
Eight fire engines were sent to tackle the fire which started at about 0500 BST.
The ship was undergoing £25m renovation works and was closed to visitors.
Speaking to BBC News the Chief Executive of the Cutty Sark Trust, Richard Doughty, said he feared what would be lost in the blaze.
"When you lose original fabric, you lose the touch of the craftsman, you lose history itself," he said.
"And what is special about Cutty Sark is the timbers, the iron frames, that went to the South China Seas and to think that that is threatened in any way is unbelievable, it's an unimaginable shock."
He said the ship would be "irreplaceable".
He added that the Cutty Sark was not just an important part of maritime heritage but an important part of British identity.
Mr Doughty described the ship as the epitome of speed under sail.
The Cutty Sark is the world's oldest surviving tea clipper
An eyewitness, who saw the fire as she was driving across the Thames, said: "I can see all this smoke billowing out from round by where the Cutty Sark is.
"It was black, thick black smoke... as I've come over the bridge there's all police cars blocking the road and everyone's being diverted."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/6675381.stm

[PMarione]

Monday, 21 May 2007, 11:05 GMT 12:05 UK BBC World

A fire which severely damaged the famous 19th Century ship Cutty Sark is being treated as suspicious by police.
The ship, which was undergoing a £25m restoration project, is kept in a dry dock at Greenwich in south-east London.
An area around the 138-year-old tea clipper had to be evacuated when the fire broke out in the early hours.
A Cutty Sark Trust spokesman said 50% of the ship was removed for restoration work. He said the trust was devastated but it could have been worse.

Charred planking
The decks of the ship are said to be unsalvageable. But much of the boat, including the masts, had already been taken away as part of the restoration project.
Chris Livett, chairman of Cutty Sark Enterprises, speaking at the scene, said: "We had removed 50% of the planking, so 50% of the planking wasn't on site and that's safe and secure.
"And from where I stand there is not a huge amount of damage to the planking that was left on.
"There are pockets of charred planking and some have gone, but it doesn't look as bad as first envisaged."

Police are analysing CCTV images which are thought to show people in the area shortly before the fire started.
Insp Bruce Middlemiss, from the Metropolitan Police, said detectives were looking into the possibility that the fire had been started deliberately and would like to speak to some people seen in the area last night.
"There is indication that there were people in the area at the time when the fire initially started, that's come from the local borough CCTV," he said.
"There's no indication at this stage that the people that are on that CCTV footage are actually involved in the incident, but may merely be witnesses."

However, a spokesman for London Fire Brigade said it was "pure speculation" to say the the cause of the fire was suspicious.
He added: "Once the fire is out, we will send our fire investigators in to establish what started it."
Firefighters were called to the scene at 0445 BST and the flames were put out by 0700 BST.

Speaking to BBC News, the chief executive of the Cutty Sark Trust, Richard Doughty, said: "When you lose original fabric, you lose the touch of the craftsman, you lose history itself.
"And what is special about Cutty Sark is the timbers, the iron frames that went to the South China Seas, and to think that that is threatened in any way is unbelievable, it's an unimaginable shock."
Mr Doughty described the ship as the epitome of speed under sail.

The Cutty Sark left London on her maiden voyage on 16 February 1870, sailing around Cape Hope to Shanghai in three-and-a-half months.
She made eight journeys to China as part of the tea trade until steam ships replaced sail on the high seas.
The ship was later used for training naval cadets during WWII, and in 1951 was moored in London for the Festival of Britain. Shortly afterwards, she was acquired by the Cutty Sark Society.

The ship was undergoing a £25m renovation and was closed to visitors.
The conservation work was being carried out because sea salt had accelerated the corrosion of her iron framework.
The fire at the Cutty Sark may mean only one clipper from the same period is left intact.
The City of Adelaide, built in 1864 to carry passengers and currently at the Scottish Maritime Museum in Ayrshire, also combines a cast iron frame with a wooden hull.

Dr Eric Kentley, curatorial consultant to the Cutty Sark Trust, said of the ship: "It can be saved. It's certainly not completely devastated.
"We will put her back together - but it's going to take much much longer and a lot more money than we originally thought."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/6675381.stm

[PMarione]

* Built in 1869 at Dumbarton on the River Clyde
* Designed by Hercules Linton
* First voyage February 1870
* Tonnage: 921 tons (935.8 tonnes)
* Hull length: 212.5 ft (64.8 m)
* Beam: 36 ft (11 m)
* Draft: 21 ft (6.4 m)

from Wikipedia

History of the Cutty Sark

The ship is named after the cutty sark (short nightshirt) worn by the fleet-footed witch featured in the poem Tam o' Shanter written by Robert Burns. She was designed by Hercules Linton and built in 1869 at Dumbarton, Scotland, by the firm of Scott & Linton, for Captain John "Jock" "White Hat" Willis, and launched November 23 of that year.

Cutty Sark was destined for the tea trade, then an intensely competitive race across the globe from China to London, with immense profits to the ship to arrive with the first tea of the year. However, she did not distinguish herself; in the most famous race, against Thermopylae in 1872, both ships left Shanghai together on June 18, but two weeks later Cutty Sark lost her rudder after passing through the Sunda Strait, and arrived in London on October 18, a week after Thermopylae, a total passage of 122 days. Her legendary reputation is supported by the fact that her captain chose to continue this race with an improvised rudder instead of putting into port for a replacement, yet was only beaten by one week.

In the end, clippers lost out to steamships, which could pass through the recently-opened Suez Canal and deliver goods more reliably, if not quite so quickly, which as it turned out was better for business. Cutty Sark was then used on the Australian wool trade. Under the respected Captain Richard Woodget, she did very well, posting Australia-to-Britain times of as little as 67 days. Her best run, 360 nautical miles (666 km) in 24 hours (an average 15kt, 27.75 km/h), was said to have been the fastest of any ship of her size.

In 1895 Willis sold her to the Portuguese firm Ferreira and she was renamed after the firm. In 1916 she was dismasted off the Cape of Good Hope, sold, re-rigged in Cape Town as a barquentine, and renamed Maria do Amparo. In 1922 she was bought by Captain Wilfred Dowman, who restored her to her original appearance and used her as a stationary training ship. In 1954 she was dry-docked at Greenwich.

Cutty Sark is also preserved in literature in Hart Crane's long poem "The Bridge" which was published in 1930.

[PMarione]

From Lloyds List (14 September 2007):

[alexlitandem]

I wonder how the cost of `restoration', at £X million in today's money actually compares to the initial cost, at today's equivalent value, of first building the ship?

Anyone know the original build cost and dates and then we could have a stab at doing the `math'?

[PMarione]

Here is what I found:

[alexlitandem]

OK,

Here is a first stab at `the math'.

£16,150 in 1869 equates to approximately £1,344,020 in today's terms.

£35 million today ( original cost of restoration = £20 million, plus additional £10 million following the fire) would equate to £420,566 in 1869 money.

So, from £1.3 million in today's money...we leap to £35 million.

In 1922, the £3750.00 paid equates to £148,982 in today's money. A steal relative to the cost of the original build.

Net net: on a `like for like basis' it cost £1.3 million of today's £££'s to build...and more than thirty times that amount of today's £££'s to restore.

(Rough and ready calculation tool here: http://www.moneysorter.co.uk/calculator_inflation.html )

[alexlitandem]

I thought there were some `construction' insights in this piece from today's BBC News site that some here may find interesting...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7105813.stm