Cutty Sark (disambiguation)

The Cutty Sark is a tea clipper built in Scotland.

Cutty Sark may also refer to:

See also

Cutty-sark (witch)

"Cutty sark" is 18th-century Scots for "short chemise" or "short undergarment". Hyphenated, Cutty-sark was a nickname given to the witch Nannie Dee, a fictional character created by Robert Burns in his Tam o' Shanter, after the garment she wore. The figurehead of the tea clipper Cutty Sark is named after the character.

Etymology

Cutty or cuttie (the diminutive form of cuttit, from Early Middle English cutte, kutte, cute "ugly") is "short" or "stumpy".

Sark or serk (from Old English serc; Old Norse serk) is a "shift", "chemise", or "shirt".

The earliest recorded literary usage of the term cutty sark (as opposed to older usage of the two separate words) is by Dougal Graham in c. 1779 (the year of his death): "A cutty sark of guide harn sheet, My mitter he pe spin, mattam."

Tam o' Shanter's witch

In Burns' 1791 poem Tam o' Shanter, the drunken Tam, riding home on his horse, happens upon a witches' dance. Among the dancing figures is a particularly beautiful young witch named Nannie (Scots pet-form of Anna), "ae winsome wench and wawlie" (line 164). She is wearing a harn (linen) sark (nightshirt) which fitted her as a child (a "lassie") but is now rather too short for her:

Cutty Sark

Cutty Sark is a British clipper ship. Built on the Clyde in 1869 for the Jock Willis Shipping Line, she was one of the last tea clippers to be built and one of the fastest, coming at the end of a long period of design development which halted as sailing ships gave way to steam propulsion.

The opening of the Suez Canal (also in 1869) meant that steam ships now enjoyed a much shorter route to China, so Cutty Sark spent only a few years on the tea trade before turning to the trade in wool from Australia, where she held the record time to Britain for ten years. Improvements in steam technology meant that gradually steamships also came to dominate the longer sailing route to Australia and the ship was sold to the Portuguese company Ferreira and Co. in 1895, and renamed Ferreira. She continued as a cargo ship until purchased by retired sea captain Wilfred Dowman in 1922, who used her as a training ship operating from Falmouth, Cornwall. After his death, Cutty Sark was transferred to the Thames Nautical Training College, Greenhithe in 1938 where she became an auxiliary cadet training ship alongside HMS Worcester. By 1954 she had ceased to be useful as a cadet ship and was transferred to permanent dry dock at Greenwich, London on public display.

Saro Cutty Sark

The Saro A17 Cutty Sark was a British amphibious aircraft from the period between World War I and World War II, built by the British firm Saunders-Roe (also known as SARO). The aircraft was named after the ship Cutty Sark, rather than the garment.

Development

In 1928, Sir Alliot Verdon Roe sold Avro. He bought an interest in S. E. Saunders, flying boat manufacturers based at Cowes, Isle of Wight, southern England; the company was renamed Saunders-Roe. The A17 Cutty Sark was the new company's first design. It was a shoulder-winged twin-engined four-seat amphibian monoplane with an all-metal hull and plywood covered wings. The above-wing pylon-mounted engines could easily be changed, and a variety of different engines were used to power Cutty Sarks, including 104 hp Cirrus Hermes Mk 1s and 120 hp de Havilland Gipsy IIs. The Saro A19 Cloud was developed from this design.

Only 12 Cutty Sarks were built, and none lasted long in service, but the type nevertheless saw service with many users in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, China, Japan and the Dominican Republic.

Cutty Sark (short story)

"Cutty Sark" (Russian: Катти Сарк) is a novella about the sailing ship Cutty Sark by the Soviet writer and paleontologist Ivan Yefremov. It was written in 1942-1943 and first published in the USSR in 1944.

Intrigued by the history of the Cutty Sark, Yefremov produced a sketch about her, which ended with a beautiful version of dry-docking the legendary tea clipper in the USA. The story was translated into English and other languages. Yefremov's story may have influenced the preservation of the Cutty Sark, which was reconstructed and dry-docked in Greenwich, London, 1954.

The feedback from English-speaking readers forced Yefremov to "upgrade" the storyline with some new facts from clipper's life.

The story popularized the Cutty Sark in the USSR and Russia.

References

Cutty Sark (whisky)

Cutty Sark is a range of blended Scotch whisky produced by Edrington plc of Glasgow, whose main office is less than 10 miles (16 kilometres) from the birthplace of the famous clipper ship of the same name. The whisky was created on March 23, 1923 as a product of Berry Brothers & Rudd, with the home of the blend considered to be at The Glenrothes distillery in the Speyside region of Scotland. The name comes from the River Clyde–built clipper ship Cutty Sark, whose name came from the Scots language term "cutty-sark", the short shirt [skirt] prominently mentioned in the famous poem by Robert Burns, "Tam o' Shanter". The drawing of the clipper ship Cutty Sark on the label of the whisky bottles is a work of the Swedish artist Carl Georg August Wallin. He was a mariner painter, and this is probably his most famous ship painting. This drawing has been on the whisky bottles since 1955. The Tall Ships' Races for large sailing ships were originally known as The Cutty Sark Tall Ships' Races, under the terms of sponsorship by the whisky brand.

Cutty Sark (yacht)

Not to be confused with the famous tea clipper, the private steam yacht Cutty Sark was built, from plates originally destined for an S class destroyer, by Yarrow and Co Ltd of Scotstoun for Major Henry Keswick (1870–1928) of Jardine’s. She was launched on 18 March 1920.

She had a length of 263 ft (80 m); beam of 25 ft (7.6 m) and draught of 16 ft (4.9 m), and a gross registered tonnage of 883. Originally she had 4 Yarrow turbines of 5,000 bhp (3,700 kW) giving her a speed of 24 knots (44 km/h). Though fast, she was uncomfortable in anything like a sea.

Circumnavigation

Major Keswick took her on a round the world voyage to visit Jardine’s interests in the Far East. She left Stranraer on 4 November, 1920 and arrived back at that port on 26 July, 1921. The route followed was through the Mediterranean to the Far East, arriving in Hong Kong on 20 January 1921, and finally leaving Yokohama for home via Panama on 25 May 1921. Whilst in the Far East she visited Korea, Hankow, Wei-Hai-Wei, Tsingtao, Tientsin, Kurhashi-shima, Awashima and Shodoshima. The longest non-stop run was 3,391 nautical miles (6,280 km) from Yokohama to Honolulu.