Posted on 05/20/2007 10:04:21 PM PDT by FreedomCalls
The preserved 19th-century ship the Cutty Sark is on fire, London Fire Brigade has confirmed. It is said to be 100% alight and eight fire engines are at the scene in Greenwich, south-east London.
Greenwich town centre is closed to traffic and the Docklands Light Railway will also close because of a police cordon, Scotland Yard said.
Local residents were also expected to be evacuated shortly.
The ship, one of the capital's best-loved tourist attractions, is currently closed to the public for extensive renovation work. It was due to reopen in 2009.
There are fears that gas cylinders that may be on board the ship because of the renovation work may explode.
London Fire Brigade said the Metropolitan Police received a call at 04:55am reporting an extensive fire on the 19th-century clipper.
The Clyde-built Cutty Sark was, in 1869, one of the last sailing clippers to be built.
She was destined for the tea trade, then an intensely competitive race across the globe from China to London, with immense profits to the ship to arrive with the first tea of the year.
BUMMER
Yep. I build a model of that thing once when I was a kid. Was a big enough model that the tackle and rigging were fully functional.
This is a shame. One of the Queen’s palaces burned too during renovations. The White House may have also during the Truman era, IIRC.
“In January 2006, letters written by Clarence Ray (apprentice on board the Cutty Sark in 1894) were brought to light by Dick Ray, his great-nephew. This important archive reveals how a fifteen year old boy lived and worked alongside his shipmates. In particular, he writes to his mother about the food on board the ship (including the delights of “Salt Tram Horse”, “Leu Pie” and “Junk and Spuds”), http://www.cuttysark.org.uk/index.cfm?fa=contentGeneric.fdvmyqknhxemnmvz&pageId=213
I was wrong- the White House burned in the Oval Office Christmas Eve 1929.
The White House was gutted for renovation during the Truman years, but the furnishings were removed first.
I guess i should just ask for that screwed up post of mine to be deleted :0)
Bummer! I was on board that ship back in 1996 (before the DLR crossed the Thames) and have wandered past it several times since. It’ll be strange to think of Greenwich without it.
Very sad - we visited in June 06 and got some great photos - some of the last it seems.
The Admiralty & Observatory were very impressive and the view from the hill is breathtaking.
Er, not the Admiralty - the Royal Naval College.
But the interior walls weren't necessarily rebuilt to the same plan as the original walls. The new building has a steel frame to support the walls and floors. This means the exterior walls are no longer load bearing, and the interior walls could be mad much thinner than before. This increased the amount of space available while allowing modern conveniences like electricity, plumbing, telecommunications wires, and air conditioning to be built in.
Clipper ships were also rather expensive to operate due to the labor requirements to all the sails, plus the fact that they didn't have a whole lot of cargo space.
Sad to read that. I saw the Cutty Sark in Greenwich 3 years ago.
My grandfather was a deckhand on a Clipper ship around the turn of the last century, I do not know what ship but I remember my grandmother buying me model kits of the Cutty Sark to put together in the 60’s. I have a large wooden model of it now. This would be almost on a scale as losing the USS Constitution or “Old Ironsides” which is a registered active duty Navy vessel for anyones information. And it was the Panama canal that pretty much doomed the clippers like The Flying Cloud and Thermapyle (SP?).
I don't know that things like that are, or should be, insurable. Generally, insuring something requires being either being able to quantify the replacement cost of an item, or else what it would sell for on the open market. The concept of "replacement cost" is meaningless for the Cutty Sark, and I don't know of any market for such boats.
I don't really see any good way to set the valuation for insuring something like the Cutty Sark. It would seem that either the valuation would be too small to be meaningful, or else it would be so great as to encourage fraudulent destruction. Can insurance companies somehow avoid these problems?
I have done a lot of reading on this subject over the past few days. She is repairable, but it will take lots of time and money. Most of her 5” thick teak top deck had been removed for the restoration process, so it looks like much of the irreplaceable items were removed during the restoration process.
Thanks for the update. I hadn’t seen any further news, but had hoped the most vital portions for the ship had been removed, and weren’t damaged.
Here’s another news item on the Cutty Sark. There’s a graphic showing the extent of the fire damage relative to the hull. The long-range prognosis looks quite good for a complete restoration.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/6675381.stm
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