Cutty Sark: Chinese Tea and Australian Wool

The docks brought growing international trade to and from Britain during the C19th, including near Greenwich. Captain John Wills wanted a sailing ship built in 1868, specifically to win the annual race from Shanghai to London’s East India Docks. The Chinese tea tr­ade was already lucrative, but how much more prestigious if a clip­per could bring the freshest tea back to Britain, in the shortest time.

Prestigious and handsome. The construction of the Cutty Sark went ahead with the best materials and the best designers. Teak panelling filled the officers’ cabins and gold was added onto the carvings to highlight the sculptor’s craft.

Perhaps the tea races were wastefully expensive, but the clippers really WERE the fastest commercial sailing ships ever built. Capt Wills wanted his ship, the Cutty Sark, to be the fastest and most famous of all the clippers.

Cutty Sark in Greenwich today. Photo from the National Maritime Museum. 

Cutty Sark was launched on the Scottish Clyde in Nov 1869! Capt Will’s timing was both perfect and risky. The Suez Canal opened in November 1869, enabling ships to use the Mediterranean Sea and the Canal, instead of the long trip around the Cape of Good Hope. But clippers were designed to make best use of the strong trade winds around the African coast route. They could use the shorter route through the canal and Red Sea, but they lost their great advantage.

In any case, fame comes and fame goes. By the mid 1870s, steamships were replacing the old clippers and the last tea shipment left China in 1877.

In December 1877 the ship sailed from London to Sydney, where she took on coal for Shanghai. However, the ship was unable to find any cargo of tea for a return trip to London; the days of the tea race were over. The ship now had to scramble to take different cargoes around the world.

The Cutty Sark in Twinings Tea advertisement

By the early 1880s, Cutty Sark’s tragedy in the Chinese tea business had turned into a delight for Australian wool traders. Australian wool was the finest in the world, and magnificent wool stores, auction houses and customs offices popped up all over Geelong and other Australian wool sites. The wool needed to arrive in Britain in time to be involved in the annual January-February wool sales. Cutty Sark was the fastest and most dominant ship on the Australian wool trade for ten years; life was good.

History repeated itself when steamships eventually began to dominate the wool trade as well. Cutty Sark ceased to be profitable and in 1895 she was sold to a Portuguese firm. The ship traded various cargoes between Portugal, all its colonies and Britain - at least until World War One.

Cutty Sark loading wool in Sydney Harbour 1880s. Photo: National Maritime Museum. 

She was purchased in 1922 by Captain Wilfred Dowman at Falmouth Harbour after undergoing repairs. On Capt Dowman's death in 1938, his widow made a gift of the clipper to the Thames Nautical Training College. For the half century after 1938, Cutty Sark stood in dry dock in Greenwich where she became a famous London landmark and a precious relic from Britain’s maritime history. In 1951, the Festival of Britain  showed how important it was to save this gracious old lady.

The ship had clearly become rather decayed over the decades and new efforts to preserve the Cutty Sark began in 2004. What a catastrophe it was when the ship was accidentally set on fire in 2007. It probably would have been cheaper to build the boat anew, but since much of the historic timber works had already been removed for conservation work, the Cut­ty Sark was once again restored with most of its original fittings.

Master's quarters, restored

How appropriate that the Queen could re-open the Cutty Sark during her Diamond Jubilee Year. The ship was suspended in a metal apparat­us, 3 metres above the dry dock; this relieves stress on her hull. But it also allows visitors UNDER the 1000 tonne ship, to examine the innovative design that made the Cutty Sark one of the fastest vessels afloat in 1869.