Monday, May 21, 2007

Cutty Sark. the older world slips yet further away I have this idea that the world, which exists in the minds of men and women, slides away in stages. It exists not only in the times and customs recalled in the living memory of people, but also in the patterns imposed on us or still available to us in the built environments and devices that remain among us. These were my thoughts as I read the sad stories on the tea clipper Cutty Sark burnt down in Greenwich BBC NEWS | Special Reports | 629 | 629 | The Cutty Sark's proud heritage. One step less than absolutely tragic because so much of the ship was being housed elsewhere during the refit Edinburgh Evening News - UK - History up in smoke as fire wrecks Cutty Sark. Worse for possibly being deliberate arson Cutty Sark fire may have been arson - washingtonpost.com. Oddly enough I had mentioned the Cutty Sark to my nephew Grant just the previous weekend. He had been looking over all his ship models and had been trying to draw a sailing ship. He had asked if there were any sailing ships from the old days left. The Cutty Sark was the first I mentioned. A nineteenth-century wood-clad square-rigged ship. One of the last left Cutty Sark - Wikipedia. There are windjammers, downeasters, Steel-hulled sailing ships. Schooner rigged ships left. I remember the Tall Ships procession that accompanied the Bicentennial and made the rounds in the years afterwards. While on the USS Ranger we passed one in the Gulf of Thailand which I think belonged to the Spanish Navy1, I have no idea what it was doing there, but there it was. Nothing like the Cutty Sark though. Her cutty sark, o' Paisley harn, That, while a lassie, she had worn, In longitude tho' sorely scanty, It was her best, and she was vauntie -- Tam o' Shanter Robert Burns ____________ 1. This would have been the Juan Sebastian De Elcano Juan Sebastián Elcano (Spanish ship) - Wikipedia. which I probably also saw in Boston a number of years earlier. I have a picture of it from the USS Ranger encounter which I may scan later on. 11:40:02 PM    comment [];trackback [];

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. 2007 P Bushmiller. Last update: 5/31/07; 12:58:57 AM.