page_title: Cutty Sark
section_title: Damage
hierarchical_section_title: Cutty Sark / Museum ship / Conservation and fire / Damage
caption_attribution_description: English: The Cutty Sark, burnt out The Cutty Sark caught fire (allegedly by arson) on the morning of 21 May 2007; this photo was taken at 7pm just as the fire crews were leaving after putting the fire out. The ship is now undergoing restoration (see Cutty_Sark). Lottery funding has been withdrawn so the completion date is uncertain but unlikely to be before 2011.
context_page_description: Cutty Sark is a British clipper ship. Built on the River Leven, Dumbarton, Scotland 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 meant that steamships 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 in 1922 by retired sea captain Wilfred Dowman, 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.
context_section_description: Aerial video footage showed extensive damage, but seemed to indicate that the ship had not been destroyed in her entirety by the 2007 fire. A fire officer present at the scene said in a BBC interview that when they arrived, there had been "a well-developed fire throughout the ship". The bow section looked to be relatively unscathed and the stern also appeared to have survived without major damage; the fire seemed to have been concentrated in the centre of the ship. The chairman of Cutty Sark Enterprises said after inspecting the site: "The decks are unsalvageable but around 50% of the planking had already been removed; however, the damage is not as bad as originally expected."
  As part of the restoration work planned before the fire, it was proposed that the ship be raised 3 metres (10 ft), to allow the construction of a state-of-the-art museum space beneath. This would allow visitors to view her from below.
  There was criticism of the policies of the Cutty Sark Trust and its stance that the most important thing was to preserve as much as possible of the original fabric. Proponents of making her fit to go to sea advocated that the fire repairs be done in such a manner to enable her to do so.
  However, the state of the timbers, especially the keel, and the fact that a hole had been cut through the hull in the 1950s for an access door, made this difficult. The Cutty Sark Trust said that less than five percent of the original fabric was lost in the fire, as the decks which were destroyed were additions not present at the original building.
  The restoration work was criticised by The Victorian Society saying that the needs of the corporate hospitality market were put ahead of the preservation of the historic fabric of the ship. Building Design magazine awarded the project its Carbuncle Cup for the worst new building completed in 2012 saying "The scheme's myriad failings stem from one calamitous choice: the decision to hoick the 144-year-old clipper close to three metres into the air on canted steel props."
caption: The day after the fire, 21 May 2007
exif: {}