The Cutty Sark
Rob Bell explores the extraordinary tea clipper, Cutty Sark – a ship that endured drunken captains and murderous crews, inspired a whisky, and survived the coming of the steam age, only to face her greatest ordeal - a devastating fire that ripped through her hull one night in 2007. Impossibly, the wooden ship survived the blaze. But how?
One of the most glamorous ships of her day, Cutty Sark made her name racing precious cargoes of tea from Shanghai to London. Rob clambers aboard to experience first-hand the beauty and superior design of this perfect sailing ship. He delves into the ship’s tragic past – her vagabond years of ‘tramping’, mistreated by her captains and deserted by her crews. He uncovers the Cutty Sark’s unlikely link to Prohibition, and a famous brand of whisky. And he discovers how, on the night of that terrible fire, the ship was saved by a remarkable piece of good luck.