Cutty Sark Limited Edition

• 44" long x 11" Wide x 27" High (1:78 scale)
• Real authentically aged COPPER PLATED hull and painted like the actual Cutty Sark
• Requires hundreds of hours to build from scratch (not from a model kit) by our master artisans.
• Plank on frame construction (a painstaking process where each individual plank is added to the hull one at a time).
• Built with rare, high quality woods such as southwest cherry, white orchis wood, birch, maple and rosewood.
• The model rests perfectly on a large slate base between four arched dolphins.
• Masterfully stitched canvas sails.
• No plastic fittings.
• Significant deck detail.
• To build this ship, extensive research was done using various sources such as museums, drawings, copies of original plans and photos of the actual ship.
• Visit our Frequently Asked Questions or call with questions.

The Cutty Sark was launched on November 22, 1869, in Dumbarton on the Scottish Clyde. She was built to carry tea in the China Run. Due to a new hull shape that was stronger, could take more sail and be driven harder than any other, the Cutty Sark was the fastest ship taking the Cape of Good Hope Route. Her name comes from Robert Burns' poem, Tam O' Shanter. Tam meets a group of witches, most of whom are ugly, but for Nannie, who is young and beautiful and is described as wearing only a "cutty sark" (a short chemise or shirt).

Although her early years under her first master, Captain George Moodie, saw some sterling performances, fate was to thwart her owner's hopes of glory in the tea trade: in the very same year of her launching, the Suez Canal was opened, allowing steamers to reach the Far East via the Mediterranean, a shorter and quicker route not accessible to sailing ships, whose freights eventually fell so much that the tea trade was no longer profitable. So Cutty Sark's involvement in the China run was short lived, her last cargo of tea being carried in 1877.

For the next several years, the Cutty Sark was forced to seek cargoes where she could get them, and it was not until 1885 that she began the second (and more illustrious) stage of her career. The ship's heyday was in the Australian wool trade, which was overseen by Captain Richard Woodget, from 1885 to 1895.