Posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on May 22, 2007 at 01:01:14 from 195.93.21.70 user ACB.
In Reply to: The Cutty Sark posted by Jock on May 21, 2007 at 07:40:00:
The Cutty Sark has been a putrescent corpse for many years. Her owners, the Cutty Sark Trust, obsessed with the "conservation of original material", were content to step the masts through the keel onto the dock bottom whilst failing to carry out basic maintenance. The Muntz metal sheathing trapped the rain water in the elm planking where it set up a perfect battery with the wrought iron frames, destroying all three. The deck was a fake - laid over cheap, and rotten, plywood. Even the wedges on the hatchcloths were knocked in back to front. There was almost nothing of the ship left.
They applied for Lottery funding with the objective of "conserving" the little that was left on a glass fake waterline like the Great Britain in exchange for a committment to increase tourist revenues (by yet more dumbing down).
The suggestion that the fire was started deliberately has attracted a good deal of ridicule in real shipping circles, where the Trust's failure to organise a permit to work system and a fire watch whilst carrying out hot work has been much commented on.
She had been a national disgrace for some years.
Rest assured, however, that the self appointed and self perpetuating oligarchy that ran the corpse will seek to carry on, despite the absence of their precious "original fabric".
Those of us who have to do with operating old boats and old ships, who had been calling for the Cutty Sark to be rebuilt properly and returned to sea, on the basis that the real value of an old ship lies in her shape and in what she actually does and in the preservation of the skills needed to sail her, will no doubt continue to be ignored as they erect a Disneyland clipper ship on a glass sea.