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It has been slightly surreal to realise listening to the news over the past couple of days that aside from the fact that it's an old ship, I know absolutely nothing about the Cutty Sark. I should really look it up on wikipedia or something. Am I remarkably ignorant or is it rather more obsure than it's headline billing?

[Poll #989405]

ETA Boy what sucky typing! Oh for a poll editor!

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Although I actually knew about it first for having the same name as a ballad (Irish I think) about a woman (witch?) who danced in one

I know about it because (a) I can remember going to see it when I was five or six and (b) it's mentioned on the first page of Swallows and Amazons.

Another crucial poll option is the name of the whiskey. ;-)

On the whole though, the ship holds more value in its representation than anything it did itself. It's not like HMS Warrior in that respect.

See, I didn't even know it had a whisky named after it until I went and looked it up :)

Burns, according to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutty_Sark)

You make an interesting point. I have been in the area a number of times, I am pretty sure it had the hoardings round it 'cos of the renovations last time I was there but I had no idea of its age or significance.

we went and saw it when I was a kid, and my brother's little boat was called 'Sark' in a part-reference to it (and also a part-reference to 'Snark' from CS Lewis).

[X] It is one of the sites that they run past on the London Marathon

Huh, fair enough :)

Oh, and I'm going to be late to the pub tomorrow after unexpected Lecture clash moment.

Clearly you 'hang' with a 'dryer' crowd than mine. ;-)

I know a fair bit about it from Readers' Digest articles read as a child, and I sort of assumed everybody else knew the same amount about it until a Tube Stations fancy dress party a few years ago. I chopped up a T-shirt till it was in ribbons and about half its normal length and went as Cutty Sark, thinking people would a) know it meant 'short shirt' and b) have seen the painting of the poem in which witch-girl is running along in a ripped-up shirt. Of course, no one had a clue what I'd come as.

Went and saw it as a small child.

I like ships though. Navy family. My favourite is HMS Victory. You can feel history seeping into your bones*

*Which is slightly icky but strangely satisfying.

Maybe it was because they didn't consider the DLR part of the tube.

:)

-- tom

I'm really somewhere between "That it was a ship and roughly what time it was sailing" and "Load about it actually", and ticked the latter in an attempt to show off. I knew about it being a tea clipper, famously fast, etc.

-- tom

The recent news has been refreshing my memory a bit, but I knew more about it long ago when I went to see it on a school trip.

Hey, just because I'm not based in the UK doesn't mean I've never heard of the Cutty Sark. :-)

I've even seen it.

We used to visit it every so often when I was a child. I have quite strong but very old memories of what it looked like.

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