Cutty Sark: The Long Legacy of a Short Chemise

What do Ichabod Crane, one of the most famous ships to sail the seas, and a famous brand of Scotch whiskey all have in common? The short answer is . . . something short. To be less obscure: they all owe their existence to the Scots poet, Robert Burns – and a scantily clad witch whom he immortalized figures heavily in the mix.

Tam O’Shanter, one of the more lengthy poems of Burns’ (perhaps best known as the author of Auld Lang Syne), relates the experience (based on local folk legend) of the eponymous subject, a good-natured if somewhat derelict Scottish chap who, lingering overlate one night at a public house in the town of Ayr, must ride alone, in the midst of a brewing storm (literal and figurative), to his home and shrewish wife which await him in the countryside. Passing an abandoned church, he notices a light and a noisy din emanating from the midst of the ruins and creeps up close to investigate. There he sees a bevy of witches, warlocks, and other grotesque creatures dancing in a frolic, while the Devil himself plays the bagpipes.

One witch in particular catches Tam’s notice: a comely young, dark-haired damsel who is dancing provocatively, thinly clad in nothing but an undersized nightshirt. The sight causes the still-inebriated Tam to lose his wits, and he, forgetting both fear and discretion, cries aloud “Weel done, Cutty-sark!,” which roughly translates as “Way to go, you in the too-short night gown!” (Cutty, in the Scots dialect, means short, and sark denotes a shirt, or, in this case, a chemise or nightshirt commonly worn as an undergarment.)

Immediately, the lights are extinguished, and Tam, instantly aware of his folly, flees in terror, with the whole host of demonic spirits flying through the air in hot pursuit, right on his horse’s heels. Knowing, as all folks somehow do in such tales, that evil spirits cannot cross a stream of running water, Tam rides as hard as he can for the stone bridge that arches over the nearby River Doon. Just as he achieves the crest of the bridge, Nannie Dee (the pretty witch’s actual name, as we know from other sources) reaches out and grabs hold of the mare’s tale, yanking all the hairs out by the roots as Tam and Meg (the mare’s name) make good their escape.

Burns’ poem was first published in 1791, and achieved almost instantaneous renown throughout the English-speaking world. Readers of early American author Washington Irving will undoubtedly recognize immediate parallels with The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820), with hints, perhaps, of Rip Van Winkle (1819). (The experiences of Tam O’Shanter certainly align with those of Ichabod Crane, the protagonist of the former tale, though in character he more resembles the hen-pecked, tavern-frequenting namesake of the latter story.)

In 1869, a ship that was destined to be the crowning achievement of the clipper era was launched from her birthplace, the yards at River Leven, in Dumbarton, Scotland. Her owner, London shipping magnate John (“Jock”) Willis, christened her Cutty Sark, probably in evocation of the supernatural speed of Tam O'Shanter’s paranormal pursuer. (And it was a connection not without precedent: the ship widely regarded as the first true clipper was the American-built Sea Witch, launched in 1846.) Cutty Sark’s hull was of a hybrid design: iron ribs within clad with traditional wooden planking without. Her figurehead was a masterfully carved image of Nannie Dee, painted ghostly white and clutching a horse's tail in her outstretched left hand.

At first it might have seemed that Cutty Sark’s diabolical associations, rather than bestowing any advantage, had instead called down a curse. A series of setbacks, disappointing performances, and even tragedies marred her early years. (On one ill-fated voyage her distraught captain committed suicide by throwing himself overboard.) Built with the tea run from China to London in mind, she served in that capacity for only a few brief years. With the opening of the Suez Canal, steamers had captured most of the tea trade by the late 1870s, and the clippers were forced to range for other less glamorous cargo. After several years hauling whatever freight she could command – coal, jute, timber, sugar, castor oil – and more bad luck – she limped into New York Harbor in the spring of 1882 in sorry shape and with a half-starved crew, thanks to the the neglect and incompetence of her then-captain – Cutty Sark was refitted in 1885 for the Australian wool trade.

Her new captain, Richard Woodget, proved an expert master, and together over the next decade they forged a legendary reputation that glimmers yet, like a sterling capstone on the glorious age of sail. The Australian wool runs proved every bit as competitive as the China tea trade had been, and Cutty Sark demonstrated at last that she could consistently outrun her old rival, Thermopylae, or any other vessel afloat – including even the new-fangled steamers if the winds were in her favor.

Sold to a Portugese shipping firm in 1895, Cutty Sark operated as a merchant vessel well into the 20th century, and after that as a training vessel by another English owner. By the 1950s, her unique prestige as the sole survivor of the clipper era led to the establishment of the Cutty Sark Preservation Society, which undertook a thorough restoration of the famed ship. Put on permanent display in Greenwich, she resides there to this day, despite extensive rebuilding following a devastating fire in 2007.

Thanks to the popular brand of Scotch whiskey introduced in 1923, Cutty Sark is a name known the world over, though the vast majority of its imbibers no doubt have little notion either of the term’s meaning or its origins. But for those in the know, it would certainly be fitting to lift a glass of Cutty Sark on New Year’s Eve, while singing Auld Lang Syne, in honor of the poetic ties that unite all of these themes together.

Flying Cloud: Around the Horn in Under 90 Days

On this date 169 years ago (August 31, 1851) the clipper ship Flying Cloud, on her maiden voyage, sailed into San Francisco’s Golden Gate and docked, having completed the 15,000 mile passage from New York via Cape Horn in the record-breaking sailing time of 89 days and 21 hours. At various points of the voyage, she logged speeds in excess of 18 knots (almost 21 mph), and covered as many as 374 nautical miles in one 24 hour period. While these rates of speed seem ponderously slow by modern standards, the fact that anywhere from 150 to 200 days was considered typical for the same passage just a few years earlier helps to lend appreciation for the sensation that a passage in less than 90 days caused at the time.

The clipper ships were the result of innovative construction on the part of several forward-thinking ship builders in the 1840s, who applied the sleek-hulled designs of smaller vessels to large ocean-going ships intended for around-the-world voyages. While unquestionably built for speed, more conservative seamen of the day doubted whether the clippers, with their knife-edged prows and slender proportions, could handle without foundering the rough seas and 50 foot swells that a Cape Horn passage could throw at a ship, but these fears were soon put to rest. And speed definitely meant irresistibly big profits for the owners: rapid deliverability of goods, especially tea from China during the 1850s – 1870s, realized huge profits for these ships which sometimes paid for their cost of construction many times over in a single voyage. Even after the advent of ocean-going steam ships by mid-century, it was decades before they could consitently outmatch the clippers (and their wind-driven successors, the steel-hulled windjammers) in speed, range, and reliability.

After selling his cargo of butter and cheese in San Francisco and scraping together a new crew (most of the original crew had immediately abandoned upon docking for the California gold fields), Captain Josiah Creesy weighed anchor and set off on another race across the Pacific for China and a load of tea to be delivered back in New York following a return passage around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope. Throughout this and subsequent celebrated voyages (including one three years later in which the Flying Cloud bested its own time for the New York to San Francisco passage by four hours, setting a new record for an exclusively sail driven vessel that stood for 135 years) the ship was expertly guided by her navigator, who was none other than Mrs. Eleanor Creesy, wife of the captain! A Massachussetts native, she had studied the arts of navigation since childhood, with the intention of one day marrying a sea captain and accompanying him around the world, just as she was now doing. Up to date on all of the latest navigational aids and techniques of her day, she was one of the first to make extensive use of Matthew Fontaine Maury’s detailed charts of global wind patterns and oceanic currents, which had been laboriously compiled by the latter, whose own career at sea in the US Navy had been cut short by an injury which landed him a desk job – along with access to what he came to realize was a treasure-trove of information contained in ships’ logs stretching back decades, lying mouldering in the Navy’s archives and begging to be compiled and published.

Longfellow’s poem The Building of the Ship was inspired by watching the Flying Cloud take shape and then being launched from Boston’s shipyards.

Build me straight, O worthy Master! 
Stanch and strong, a goodly vessel, 
That shall laugh at all disaster, 
And with wave and whirlwind wrestle!
. . . And see! she stirs! 
She starts, — she moves, — she seems to feel 
The thrill of life along her keel, 
And, spurning with her foot the ground, 
With one exulting, joyous bound, 
She leaps into the ocean's arms!