Cutty Sark, London

Cutty Sark is the historic clipper ship preserved here at Greenwich. Built in 1869 on the River Leven in Scotland, she was created for the Jock Willis Shipping Line during the closing era of fast tea sailing. Her speed mattered because tea was valuable and seasonal, but steamships soon gained the advantage on the route to China.

The ship then carried wool from Australia before steam power also took over that trade. The name comes from Robert Burns's poem Tam o' Shanter, where Cutty Sark is a fictional witch dressed in a short shift. She pursues Tam o' Shanter on horseback and seizes the horse's tail at the Brig o' Doon.

That image linked the witch's swiftness with the clipper's speed. Notice the long, sharply drawn hull and the tall sailing rig: this is a surviving example of composite construction, with a wooden hull held by an iron frame. After service as a cargo vessel, a training ship, and a cadet ship, Cutty Sark entered permanent display at Greenwich in 1954. Fire damaged her during conservation in 2007, but restoration brought her back to visitors in 2012.