Ship Ashore

A home, a teacher, a fast and graceful competitor, a free ticket to Australia, a museum. Witness to the humdrum of pea soup suppers and tobacco chewing, and the setting for mutiny, murder and suicide. Cutty Sark, the world’s only surviving tea clipper ship, has seen a lot. Today she can be found on the river in South London, part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Maritime Greenwich, unmissable thanks to her main mast shooting up 153 feet into the skies over London. The three levels of the ship can be explored, and a glass-roofed visitor centre surrounds the hull and houses a fascinating museum. If you stand to her south, the sleek towers of London’s financial district, Canary Wharf, in all its gleaming glory, are her backdrop.

This year marks 150 years since her launch. Built in 1869 on the River Clyde in Dumbarton, Scotland, Cutty Sark was a masterpiece of ship