Cutty Sark was one of the fastest tea clippers of her time. These were sailing ships that plied the route between Great Britain and the Far East bringing tea from the Orient.
She was built on the Clyde in 1869 but only spent a few years on the tea trade.
The building of the Suez Canal and the advent of steam ships meant that the tea clippers no longer had an advantage. Cutty Sark transferred to the wool route from Australia. Later in her life she became a cadet training ship, finally becoming a permanent exhibit in dry dock at Greenwich in 1954.
A major fire almost completely destroyed the ship in 2007. The restored clipper was opened to the public in 2012.
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