Under Full Sail

by Rob Mundle

  The skill of the figurehead maker was one of the least recognised talents in shipbuilding. He was an artisan as much as a woodworker, a man who could take a large balk of knotless timber and, using everything from the smallest razor-sharp knife or chisel through to a similarly sharp adze, deftly carve then paint a remarkably lifelike creation that would stand proudly beneath a ship’s bowsprit. Here, Cutty Sark’s figurehead maker excelled.

  Having been impressed by the hull shape and performance of a sailing ship-cum-steam paddle wheeler, Tweed, John Willis had no hesitation in having the lines of her hull virtually replicated in the drawings for his soon-to-be-ordered ship. For that, he went to a promising young Scottish designer, Hercules Linton, who had recently established a shipyard in Dumbarton in partnership with a man named Scott.

  Before the design process began, Willis took Linton to see Tweed when she was in dry dock, and this experience, along with consultation with two of Tweed’s captains, enabled the designer to decide on the final shape of the latest addition to the Willis fleet. His theory was that it would be difficult to improve on the shape of Tweed’s forward sections: she was particularly fast to windward, easily driven, and not difficult to tack. But it was his firm belief that the stern sections should be broader and more buoyant than those of Tweed, so that the new ship stood less chance of being pooped in heavy seas, and would surf down waves faster while being easier to handle.

  Willis’s contract for the building of the 212-foot 6-inch hull was a tough one: construction had to be completed within six months, the maximum weight would be 950 tons at a cost of £17 per ton, and there was a £5 penalty for every day late beyond the designated launch date.

  Captain George Moodie, who was to be the commander for the ship’s first three voyages, supervised the construction. He was considered the finest of all captains at the time, described by Basil Lubbock as ‘a careful navigator, with a great deal of Scotch caution, which made him disinclined to take risks in the China Seas like some of his rivals, he knew how to carry sail, and he was a magnificent seaman and a good businessman’.

  Cutty Sark’s composite construction saw East India teak used for the topside planking and American rock elm below the waterline, all fixed with Muntz metal fastenings to wrought-iron frames and diagonals.

  A month after she was launched, when the finishing touches to the hull and cargo area below deck were completed, Cutty Sark was towed a few miles downstream from Dumbarton, where she was rigged and masted. Like Tweed, her foremast was unusually far aft from the stem while the main and mizzen masts were conventionally positioned. It was probably anticipated that this rig configuration would make her easier to tack and safer when sailing in strong winds and large following seas. Her lower masts, lower yards and bowsprit were made from iron, while the rest of her spars were shaped from Oregon pine. She had five shrouds supporting each mast and a surprising eight backstays in all – probably a feature required by Captain Moodie so that the ship could be driven to the limit in strong winds without the fear of being dismasted. A total of 400 tons of ballast was required when she was not carrying cargo.

  Accommodation for the captain and crew was above the usual standard. The captain’s and officers’ accommodation on the aft deck was panelled in teak and bird’s-eye maple, much of which featured ornate carving. The teak furniture came from the best cabinetmaker in the region, while the captain, who on similar ships would normally sleep in a bunk, had the pleasure of reposing in a teak four-poster bed. It was said that Cutty Sark ‘both aloft, on deck and below was fitted up like a millionaire’s yacht’.

  When everything was in readiness, Captain Moodie and his crew sailed the gleaming new Cutty Sark out of the Firth of Clyde and south to London, where she was prepared for her first commercial voyage.

  *

  This was a time in history when the world’s oceans formed one gigantic racecourse; the two major capes were the turning points and the clipper ships were the thoroughbreds. Of all the passages these ships sailed, it was the tea route from China to England that formed the track for the major annual event. Fortunes were won and lost through wagers on which ship would be first into port with her precious load of the new season’s tea. Even crewmen were known to put on the line some, if not all, of the wage they would receive for the voyage.

  The Tea Race – which newspapers often referred to as the Great Ship Race – was the specific trade route for which Cutty Sark was designed and built. Willis was after a ship capable of winning the great race, and in his mind, Cutty Sark, with Moodie aboard as captain, gave him his best chance of lowering the colours of the then fastest ship on the tea run, Thermopylae.

  It was 16 February 1870 when Cutty Sark sailed from London, bound for Shanghai with a cargo of wine, spirits and beer. On the return voyage, she carried a cargo of 1.3 million pounds of tea back to London. She arrived there on 13 October after a voyage taking a respectable 110 days.

  It wasn’t until 1872 that the much-anticipated showdown between Cutty Sark and the all-conquering Thermopylae came to pass. Heavily laden with cargoes of tea, both ships departed Shanghai together on 18 June, and by the time they were off Hong Kong, Cutty Sark was holding an impressive lead despite having had her fore topgallant blown to shreds. (Numerous other sails were to follow over the next three weeks.)

  When the wind went light, Cutty Sark showed a clear superiority over her rival, and by 27 June she was hull-down ahead – a mere speck on the horizon from the deck of Thermopylae. Eleven days later, Cutty Sark was a remarkable 400 nautical miles ahead of her adversary, head-reaching in a powerful sea. Conditions were described in the ship’s log as ‘a hard gale with howling squalls’, weather that proved too much for the fore and main lower topsails, which subsequently blew to pieces.

  By the first week of August the two ships were well across the equator and sailing towards the Cape of Good Hope in conditions as cold as could be expected in the southern-hemisphere winter.

  Suddenly, on August 15, as first light was breaking in the east, a massive wave slammed under Cutty Sark’s stern and tore her rudder from its mountings.

  Captain Moodie immediately called for one of the ship’s spars to be lashed to the taffrail so it could be used as a sweep oar for steering, but this proved totally ineffective.

  The only person who was happy about these developments was the ailing Robert Willis – the brother of Cutty Sark’s owner – who was aboard the ship in the hope of improving his health. Willis, who was far from enjoying the passage, saw this situation as an opportunity to be put ashore at the nearest South African port, but Captain Moodie would have no part of it. He called for the ship to heave to and ordered his carpenter and others to make a jury rudder using a spare spar and pieces of iron.

  Quite fortuitously, there were two stowaways found aboard Cutty Sark after she departed Shanghai – one an English carpenter, and the other a Scottish blacksmith. The carpenter helped shape the rudder, while the blacksmith formed bolts, straps and bars so the rudder could be attached to the sternpost with the use of eye bolts. It took five laborious days – during which Cutty Sark rolled constantly from gunwale to gunwale in heavy seas – before the job was completed in what was nothing short of miraculous circumstances.

  The endeavour was not without incident, however: on one occasion the ship lurched so violently that the forge, filled with red-hot coals, was upset into the shirt of the captain’s young son. He was scarred for life.

  On the afternoon of 21 August, conditions had abated to the degree where sails could be set and Cutty Sark returned to her homeward course. The jury rudder lasted for a month. When the ship was north of St Helena Island, the eye bolts failed, as did the chains being used to turn the rudder from deck level, so the contrivance had to be lifted aboard for repairs.

  Incredibly, after fifty-four days of sailing with the jury rudder fitted, Cutty Sark was in the English Channel, much to the plaudits of Moodie’s crew. Following this superb display of seamanship, Captain Moodie went
on to guide his ship into London after a total passage time of 122 days – a mere seven days behind Thermopylae.

  *

  But what is recognised as the greatest Tea Race of all had come five years earlier, in 1866, between the clipper ships Fiery Cross, Ariel, Taeping and Serica. Fiery Cross departed Foochow on 29 May and the other three the following day, on a course covering some 16,000 nautical miles.

  After ninety-nine days at sea, Taeping and Ariel entered the English Channel and raced side by side towards the entrance to the Thames. It was only the fact that Taeping drew less water than her rival that enabled her to enter the river and dock in London on a lower tide than Ariel required if she were to avoid running aground. The winning margin was just twenty minutes. Serica arrived a mere two hours later, while Fiery Cross reached London two days in arrears.

  But by the end of 1872, it was becoming apparent that the ‘steam kettles’ were on their way to claiming the lion’s share of the tea business between China and Europe. During the previous twelve months, forty-five steamers destined for the tea trade had been launched from shipyards on the Clyde. It was soon evident to all that there was no longer any place for the clippers on this run.

  It appears that, by this time, John Willis and Captain Moodie had had a falling out over what Willis referred to as Moodie’s ‘pigheadedness’. The owner stood his ground, and before long decided that the one man he could trust when it came to commanding his much-loved Cutty Sark was Captain F.W. Moore, who had previously worked as his superintendent within the company.

  Between 15 November and 2 December 1872, a heavily laden Cutty Sark and three other clippers, Duke of Abercorn, Blackadder and Thomas Stephens, departed London for either Melbourne or Sydney. Of the four, it was Cutty Sark’s sixty-nine day passage to Port Phillip that stood as the most impressive, especially considering the amount of cargo she was carrying.

  But by the late 1870s, she was tramping for cargoes around the world. In December 1877, now under Captain W.E. Tiptaft, she sailed from London a month late after crashing into two anchored ships in the English Channel while waiting out a storm, and having to be towed back up the Thames for repairs. She arrived in Sydney with a wide variety of cargo crammed into her cargo area ’tween decks, including tea, jute and castor oil. Unfortunately there was no profitable return cargo to be had, so she took on a load of coal and delivered it to Shanghai, where Captain Tiftaft sadly died in October and was replaced by James Wallace, the first mate.

  Tragedy came in 1880 when Cutty Sark was commissioned to take a full load of coal from Cardiff in Wales to American naval ships in Yokohama, Japan – a passage during which some of the crew mutinied and her well-respected new captain committed suicide.

  This terrible event stemmed from the actions of the ship’s first mate, Sydney Smith, a callous and brutal slave-driver who had no respect for the crew. During a storm in the Indian Ocean, crewman John Francis ignored the first mate’s orders and threatened him with an iron bar, which Smith then used to strike Francis across the head. Francis died of his wounds days later, and Wallace had Smith confined to his quarters.

  On approach to Anjer in Indonesia, it was realised that Smith was missing; the fact was that he had begged Captain Wallace to smuggle him aboard another vessel so he could escape trial. The crew immediately advised their captain that they would not sail the ship until the murderer was found – to which Wallace responded by clapping four of the ringleaders of the mutiny in irons, so that some semblance of order would return to the ship.

  After departing Anjer for Yokohama, and while the ship was becalmed in the Java Sea, Captain Wallace became increasingly concerned about the role he had played in aiding Smith’s escape and the consequences he would face at the inevitable investigation. The burden on his conscience soon became too much for him to endure. So at 4am on the fourth day into the journey, just as the new watch had been called on deck, Wallace walked aft, while directing the helmsman to check his compass course. He then stepped up onto the taffrail and leaped overboard, never to be seen again.

  Cutty Sark eventually made her way to Singapore, and John Willis arranged with Captain Fowler of Hallowe’en, another ship in his fleet, to have Hallowe’en’s chief officer, William Bruce, join Cutty Sark as captain. Fowler was only too pleased to oblige, as he ‘hated his chief officer like poison and was only too delighted to get rid of him’.

  Within days of Bruce’s arrival onboard, Cutty Sark’s crew clearly understood why Fowler had encouraged his departure. He proved to be an incompetent master who claimed pay for non-existent crew and always under-provisioned the ship to save money. At one stage there was even a full-scale mutiny in protest. He was replaced after just eighteen months by Captain Moore of the clipper Blackadder.

  In 1880 Cutty Sark had her sail plan reduced, and this made her safer and more manageable when charging before howling westerly winds in the southern seas and while en route to Australia. Her lower masts were reduced by almost 10 feet in height, and 7 feet were lopped from her lower yards. Despite this reduction in sail area, she remained surprisingly swift in light airs. At this time her crew numbered twenty-eight, including the captain.

  In July 1883, Cutty Sark finally found a new vocation. That month she departed Gravesend in England bound for Newcastle north of Sydney, arriving there just 78 days later. In December that year, she departed Newcastle with 4289 bales of wool crammed into her cargo holds, along with twelve casks of tallow. In what proved to be a rapid run across the southern seas and north into the Atlantic, she was back in London in a remarkable 83 days: the best time for the year by for vessels sailing from Australia’s east coast to England for that year.

  Soon Cutty Sark had become one of the most sought-after ships for the highly profitable wool trade, delivering the finest Australian fleeces to London. She would make a name for herself as one of the four great wool clippers – the others being Thermopylae, Mermerus and Salamis, the latter being an iron-hulled copy of Thermopylae.

  After that 1883 passage, the man who would be lauded as the most successful master ever to walk Cutty Sark’s decks, Captain Richard Woodget, went aboard along with his three collie dogs and took command. He was recognised for his ability to lead a crew through all weather conditions, his skill as a navigator and ‘feel’ for a ship, and the understanding and respect he held for his men.

  sOne of Cutty Sark’s most famous passages came under Woodget’s stewardship in 1889 – by which time the sun was rapidly setting on the age of the clipper ships. Both Cutty Sark and the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company’s [P&O] crack mail steamer Britannia were voyaging from London to Sydney at the time. Britannia had passed through Bass Strait and turned north to sail the final 250 nautical miles to Sydney. A fresh ‘southerly buster’ was blowing and Britannia was logging around 14 knots.

  That evening, though, there came an amazing sight for all on deck. They could only watch in awe as Cutty Sark – which they had passed just two hours earlier – came storming towards them from astern with a real bone in her teeth: a massive bow wave. She then hurtled past the ‘steam kettle’ amid clouds of spray – 2100 tons of ship and cargo, with sails and rig loaded to their limits while doing a consistent 17 knots.

  It was during Woodget’s time as captain that a youngster identified only as C.E. Ray, from the seaside town of Hastings, England, joined Cutty Sark as an apprentice sailor. He would provide future maritime historians with a wealth of enlightening and insightful detail relating to life on board, as seen through young eyes, via letters he wrote to his mother while serving his ‘time’ aboard the famous ship.

  His early letters to her spoke of his gradual adjustment to life at sea:

  25 June 94

  My dear Mother,

  The pilot leaves tonight I expect so I am writing this short note now in case I get no more time. I am quite well and enjoying myself. The weather is beautiful but hardly any wind. We are running about 5 knots at present . . . I have been hauling on the t-gallan
t halliards and therefore the writing is very bad. We have no proper watches yet I had to stop on deck all last night. I have been aloft as far as the main t’gallant yard two or 3 times . . .

  Sunday 15th of July 94

  We have a jolly lot of fellows in the ‘house’, there are six of us altogether, we are divided into two watches . . . the old man [Captain Woodget] has got 3 dogs, scotch collies, and when we go down in the cabin to see the time they go for us . . . If we go to sleep in our watch on deck they make us ride the grey mare, that is, sit up on the upper topsail yard for the rest of the watch.

  Now I must tell you about the grub we get coffee at 5 o’clock every other morning coffee for breakfast and tea for tea.

  Monday Wednesday Friday – pea soup and pork

  Tuesday Thursday – Salt Tram Horse [salted meat] and bread

  Saturday – Junk [salted meat] and Spuds

  Sunday – Leu pie . . .

  Leu pie is my favourite dinner it is cooked altogether in a great pot, fresh meat and spuds all in soup like, underneath and dough on the top. Oh Lor, I could eat 3 whacks of it now, of course, we get any amount of dog biscuit. We shall finish the last piece of cake today for tea. We have kept it 3 weeks which I think is a long time . . . We have not had any very bad weather yet except in the Bay [of Biscay] where she rolled till her lee main yard arm nearly touched the water, and shipped seas over the foc’s’le head and amid ships . . .

  Since then we have had fine weather, it is getting very warm I never have more than a shirt and pants on ever at night. We get any amount of flying fish, they fly aboard at night, then all we have to do is catch them, cut their heads, wings, tails and fins off, clean them and then put them on a plate with some butter over them, and give them to Jimmy to cook for our breakfast. Last night I caught thirteen.