Cutty Sark

A trip out to Greenwich today, shame about the weather. The area around the Royal Naval College is an oasis of charm and fine historical architecture amongst a sea of harsh modern development and acres of wasteland.

I had fun blipping bits and bobs, fine gates, The Shard visible far away, shots out of the rear window of the DLR and so on.

It was The Cutty Sark though that captured my imagination. Built in Dumbarton in 1869 for the Jock Willis shipping line. One of the last tea clippers to be built and one of the fastest. The ship was named after Cutty Sark, the nickname of the witch Nannie Dee in Robert Burns' 1791 poem Tam o' Shanter.

The ship's figurehead, shows Nannie Dee with a grey horse's tail in her hand. In the poem she wore a linen sark (Scots: a short chemise or undergarment), that she had been given as a child, which explains why it was cutty, or in other words far too short.

Try it large.