Cutty Sark Clydebuilt: The Ships That Made The Commonwealth

The River Clyde, Scotland's most iconic waterway.

Today, it's a bustling commercial hub.

And 150 years ago,

this was the beating heart of an industrial revolution.

And fuelling it were its shipyards.

'I'm David Hayman and I grew up surrounded by those yards

'and the magnificent ships they produced.'

But it's where they went, what they did

and the lives they touched that's always fascinated me.

'In this series, I'm going to uncover the secrets of the great

'ships that laid the foundations of today's Commonwealth of Nations.

'It's a journey that's going to take me around the world to tell

'incredible stories and unearth extraordinary characters.'

If you want to know why Britannia ruled the waves

and where the Commonwealth was born, look no further than here.

In the early hours of 21 May, 2007,

a fire broke out in London's Greenwich Docklands.

FIRE BELL RINGS

SIREN WAILS

As the emergency services arrived,

it became clear that this was no ordinary incident.

The 19th-century tea clipper, the Cutty Sark, is on fire.

Ablaze was one of the most iconic ships in British maritime

history and the news made headlines around the world.

And this was the ship - the Cutty Sark, probably the most famous

ship in the world and, certainly to me, one of the most beautiful.

As a boy, I found a painting of her in a flea market

and it hung on my wall for years.

As an inspiration, she had over 20 sails,

probably miles and miles of rigging.

She must have seemed like something out of the future,

like an ocean-going sports car.

And there's a lot more to this old clipper than just looks.

No!

'Hers is a wonderful story of adventure, of speed,

'record-breaking, mutiny, murder...

'..success and even shame.'

This ship was destined to carve her name in the books of history.

And all this was driven by one man's dream of creating

the fastest ship the world had ever seen.

His name was John Willis and that obsession resulted in a ship that

would shape new nations, change many lives

and destroy a few as well.

My feeling is that a great

miscarriage of justice took place here.

One thing's for sure -

the Cutty Sark does not owe her longevity to a quiet life,

for her stories are the stuff of myth and legend,

and I'm going to explore her legacy and find out what brought her

here, to her final resting place, at Greenwich in the heart of London.

But it's a tale that begins not in London

but back in my home town of Glasgow.

The 19th century was a transformative time for the city.

Scotland and England were flourishing with free trade,

and by the 1850s, Clydeside was a key commercial hub as merchants

made a fortune from the import of goods like tobacco and sugar.

Shipbuilding had grown up and developed alongside business,

and that sexy combination made Glasgow

and Clydeside a great world centre for wooden boat-building.

Then came the revolution that was iron.

Plentiful local resources of coal and ironstone meant that the River

Clyde was better placed than any other to develop iron shipbuilding.

By the mid-1800s, there were over 30 Clydeside yards,

making 80% of the world's big ships.

It was a golden maritime age, but a highly competitive one that

didn't have much room for renegade designers.

Until, that is, someone came along who would change all that...

..Hercules Linton.

He was simply one of the brightest young minds of his generation,

a man way ahead of his time.

He wasn't just interested in building any old boat.

He wanted to build them strong and make them beautiful.

It was a design instinct that was clearly in the blood.

Born to a successful ship's carpenter in 1837,

Linton was immersed in the craft of boat-building at an early age.

At 18, he was one of the youngest apprentice

draughtsmen in the business when he joined Alexander Hall

and Sons, Britain's most prestigious shipping firm.

Even as a teenage apprentice, he was beginning to build

a reputation for himself as a very talented designer.

And by 1868, this exceptional young man started his own shipyard over

there, that unassuming piece of land on the banks of the River Clyde.

Hercules joined forces with local engineer William Scott and together,

Scott & Linton was about to create the most famous ship in the world.

'Clyde shipbuilding was a cut-throat business in the 1860s

'and Hercules had been forced to sell everything he had,

'just to buy his yard in the first place.

'He desperately needed orders.'

And he was about to get one from the most ruthless businessman around.

John Willis was a wealthy Scotsman from a powerful maritime family.

'His father had been a celebrated captain who set up his own

'successful shipping company,

'and Willis was destined to follow in the family business.'

So old "White Hat" Willis, as he was commonly called,

he spent many years at sea well into his 30s, building a fairly

formidable reputation as a merchant sea captain.

But then, on the death of his father,

he inherited a shipping line and a fleet of clippers.

He soon built up a fierce reputation as a canny

and very scrupulous businessman.

But there was one commodity that got him

more excited than anything else - this stuff. Tea.

Tea was huge business in the 19th century.

Free trade had ended the East India Company's monopoly on sales

and the result was a huge explosion in demand.

It used to be the preserve of the rich and the privileged,

but then it took off and became a working man's drink.

Millions of us began to consume it, so it was big business.

And this business created a lively sea trade between Britain and China.

And, of course, due to the competitive nature of man, the

tea races were born - who could get the tea back to Britain quickest?

Old "White Hat" Willis desperately wanted a piece of that action,

but the only way he could get it was to build a clipper fast

enough to beat everyone else.

So when he heard about a new shipyard

and a talented young designer called Hercules Linton, Willis had

surely found the perfect place to build his Cutty Sark.

In January 1869, Scott & Linton

were commissioned by Captain John Willis to build

a fine line clipper ship that would challenge for supremacy

in the tea races.

Linton had landed the biggest contract of his life,

and to make sure it would deliver, he had a trick up his sleeve.

Now, young Hercules, he was a smart kid

and he was part of a new generation of shipbuilders and ship designers.

And what they wanted to do was use new cutting-edge techniques in their

approach to the construction of ships, such as the Cutty Sark.

Linton's genius was to use both wood and iron.

His composite construction consisted of a wrought iron framework

onto which wooden planks were bolted.

'I'm meeting maritime historian Eric Kentley to find out

'more about this revolutionary approach to ship design.'

The great advantage of an iron ship, of course, is that its frames

are very, very narrow, so you're going to get far more...

-And stronger.

-And stronger.

But you can get far more cargo inside the ship than you can

on a wooden ship, whereas you know they have great big wooden beams.

So, around 1860, someone came up with the brilliant idea of, well,

let's have a wooden ship but let's make the framework of iron

and let's make it absolutely rigid so it's as strong as a bridge,

and that will give us the advantages of both.

Composite construction was born.

That really was clever and way ahead of its time, wasn't it?

Well, you still find composite vessels today,

still used as a technique in some very fast yachts

because it does combine the nice flexibility of a wooden hull

with that rigidity of the framework.

With this hull design and innovative shape,

Hercules Linton was designing a truly ground-breaking ship.

But all of this was to come at a cost as the Cutty Sark's

owner began to flex his muscles.

John Willis might have been a successful shipowner

but to many, he was also a ruthless businessman.

He knew that Linton's fledgling company were in dire

need of work, a fact that allowed Willis to drive a very hard bargain.

He would use his contract to enforce a long list of exacting

specifications on everything from quality material to craftsmanship...

..all of which would make delivery of the Cutty Sark on budget

virtually impossible.

As work started in February 1869,

these contractual details would come to haunt Linton.

Willis dispatched his own team to scrutinise every

aspect of his build.

And that meant that anything that had the slightest flaw or

even the smallest blemish was rejected.

Everything had to be produced to the most exacting standards.

Now, on top of that,

harsh financial penalties were also enforced every time

a deadline was missed and that resulted in our young genius,

Hercules Linton, ending up deep in debt.

'And documents recently discovered suggest that Willis was certainly in

'no mood to bail him out, thanks to one killer clause in the contract.'

Willis had stipulated that if Linton went under, completion

of the Cutty Sark would pass to another yard just across the river.

Old "White Hat" was building the best

ship in the world at a knock-down price.

And with someone else on stand-by to pick up the pieces

if it all went wrong, he had the perfect backup plan.

'I've come to meet Robin Denny, whose family owned that neighbouring

'yard, to find out more about what Willis was up to.'

"White Hat" Willis certainly...

He knew that they desperately wanted the contract and therefore,

he could virtually demand his own price.

-And altogether, they just couldn't cope with it.

-What a shame!

So his dreams were almost shattered at that stage, weren't they?

Young Linton's dreams, I mean.

It must have been horrific for him, yes. The poor chap!

He must have thought, "I've got myself into it. Where do I go now?"

Old "White Hat" Willis,

you think he had a master plan from the very, very beginning?

Did he attempt to destroy that yard?

I'm not sure he wanted to destroy them

but he certainly knew they were really keen, if not desperate.

He had Linton and Scott over a barrel, didn't he?

Oh, yes, yes, yes.

He was a pretty hard businessman

and he was out to benefit himself.

If anyone else got in the way, that was a bit unfortunate.

'Whatever Willis's motivation, the fact was that Scott & Linton

'were forced out of business.'

What Willis did next was to take control of the building

of the Cutty Sark from Linton's wood yard at the other side of the river,

at the foot of Dumbarton Rock, and give it to this side, Denny's yard.

By the time the Cutty Sark was ready to be launched in late 1869,

Linton was destitute and Willis's ruthlessness had made him

a much hated figure.

A Clydeside ship launch was normally a cause for great celebration

but for the Cutty Sark, it was anything but.

I'm hoping that local librarian Sam Moore can tell me

more about that day.

"On Monday afternoon there was launched from the shipbuilding

"yard of Messrs Scott & Linton, a handsome composite clipper ship.

"The Cutty Sark is intended for the China tea trade,

"and is expected by her owners to be one of the fastest ships

"engaged in that traffic."

You know, for such an iconic ship,

she'd a very inauspicious launch, didn't she?

She did, but there were many ships on the Clyde that were

launched within that short period of time

and there are many reasons for it -

the amount of ships that were launched,

but also, at that time,

there may have been a bit of friction between Mr Willis,

who had the ship built, and Scott & Linton, the designers,

and Denny, who eventually finished the ship.

Denny must've been annoyed that he was left with a ship to

finish off and at the end of the day it was, get the ship,

get it out there, get it to Greenock and finished.

I want paid and I want my men back to be able to continue

the jobs that they're being paid to do for him,

not for Scott & Linton, at the end of the day.

'But in the very same paper that marked the Cutty Sark's

'launch there was another article...

'..one that told of a landmark event that was about to have a

'catastrophic impact on this little clipper.'

"Opening of the Suez Canal,

"commenced by religious ceremonies in the open air, great enthusiasm

"prevailed."

Now, this is an extraordinary piece of synchronicity

because on the day that the Dumbarton Herald announced

the launching of the Cutty Sark,

she also announced the opening of the Suez Canal. Suez Canal?

That innocuous name alluded to an extraordinary

piece of Victorian engineering that was going to prove to be

a dagger at the heart of the beautiful Cutty Sark.

Built to facilitate the British Empire's burgeoning trade

links with Asia, by linking the Mediterranean to the Red Sea,

the Suez Canal changed everything,

cutting over 12 days of the average voyage from London to China.

Whilst it was very easy for a steamship to make her

way along this newly opened waterway,

the prevailing winds in the Red Sea meant it was well-nigh

impossible for a clipper ship to do the same.

And to make matters worse, the steamers could carry almost

twice as much cargo as a clipper and at half the crew costs.

So affording the canal toll fees was easy for steam

but impossible for sail...

..meaning that the clipper had to stick to the long route to China.

The impact of the Suez Canal on sail would not be an immediate

one as many merchants had invested heavily in their clipper freights.

But the writing was certainly on the wall.

The grand opening of the Suez Canal must have been a seriously

unsettling omen for what lay ahead.

But for now, for the Cutty Sark, she only had her eyes on one prize

- victory in the tea races.

John Willis had his new ship.

Now he planned to use it to dominate the biggest industry in the world.

As she sets sail on her maiden voyage in February 1870 to

collect her first cargo, tea was a massive colonial industry

and merchants were desperate for their multimillion pound hauls.

'The tea races that this demand inspired became

'legendary as huge bonuses were paid to the first ship to dock

'back in London with the new season's crop.

'The sprint for the finish line captured the imagination of

'the British public who began to bet on which ship would arrive first.'

This advert is a brilliant example of how frenzied the competition was.

It reads,

"Great race of the tea ships with the first new season's teas.

"The Taeping and the Ariel have arrived, with others in close

"pursuit, with something like £45 million of new tea on board,"

half a year's consumption for the United Kingdom.

The stakes were high and the Cutty Sark was about to make

a name for herself in one of the most infamous races of all.

The ship was placed under

the captaincy of Scotsman George Moodie, a highly experienced

merchant skipper who had helmed many of the ships in John Willis's fleet.

Now he was to take charge of his flagship clipper.

Her first two tea voyages were highly profitable but unmemorable.

The Cutty Sark was delivering £1 million profits

and a lasting colonial trade link with Asia for its owner.

But what Willis really wanted was to be the fastest.

And that meant beating the Cutty Sark's main competitor -

the Thermopylae, another fine Scottish-built clipper,

legendary for being the quickest ship on the open seas.

Willis had the Thermopylae

and her already established formidable reputation in his sights.

And then, in 1872, he had his first chance to beat her.

'Laden with their precious tea,

'the ships raced out of Shanghai Harbour together in June 1872,

'en route to London,

'both desperate to claim the prize of being first to port.'

The two ships were neck and neck but as they raced

into the Indian Ocean, something remarkable happened.

The Cutty Sark, with her beautifully sleek racing lines,

began to show off, began to do what she was built for.

'As Captain Moodie cast the little clipper's huge sail rig,

'she pulled away from the Thermopylae with ease.'

"With strong winds, the Cutty Sark's great power at once began to tell,

"and she went romping ahead with three consecutive runs.

"The two racers would not meet again."

The Cutty Sark was performing exactly as Hercules Linton

had designed her to, but that incredible ocean-going speed...

..was not just down to her innovative shape.

It was also down to that other unique design feature

incorporated by Hercules Linton - this stuff, Muntz metal.

Muntz was a new alloy created in the mid-1800s, made up of copper,

zinc and iron.

It was discovered that the copper was able to leach out

when in contact with water

and poison anything that tried to attach itself.

This incredible protective quality made it perfect for shipping.

Hercules decided to use this Muntz metal as a sheathing,

an outer skin, round the Cutty Sark.

And that proved to be a very effective idea because no barnacles,

no seaweed, therefore more power, more speed and more profit.

The boy was a genius!

This combination of sheathing and her unique hull design proved

to be a potent one in her famous race with the Thermopylae.

The lead she built up in that voyage in 1872 was so damn impressive!

I mean, she proved, beyond doubt, that she

was the fastest ship in the ocean.

But as captain Moodie raced his clipper around the tip

of South Africa in pursuit of the big seas, he encountered

the wrath of the very oceans that gave the Cutty Sark her speed.

Hurricane force winds battered the clipper for five days

and eventually, as the gales and high seas pounded the ship,

disaster struck.

"A heavy sea broke under the stern of the ship

"and struck the rudder, ripping it from its lifeboats

"and carrying it away from the trunk downwards.

"We soon found that we could not steer the ship."

Without her rudder, the Cutty Sark was effectively crippled, and in a

force 10 gale, it was only a matter of time before she would capsize.

So Captain Moodie had a major dilemma on his hands.

Somehow, he and his crew had to build a replacement

rudder at sea or face the complete loss of his ship with all hands.

A makeshift forge was set up on deck

and the ship's carpenter got to work on a temporary rudder.

"Constructing a new rudder on sternpost was a difficult job

"as there was a good deal of sea on.

"The difficulty now was getting the rudder in place

"as the ship rolled in strong winds and heavy seas."

Eric, it is only when you stand next to this incredible rudder that

you truly get a sense of the scale,

of the challenge facing those seamen.

Not only do you have to construct a wooden rudder from bits of spar,

bits of timber, old replacement planking,

anything you can find, to carve something roughly that shape,

you actually have to make all these fittings to actually hang

it off the stern of the ship.

The only way to do that is to set up a temporary forge on the deck.

You can imagine what that would have been like,

with hot, burning coals on a deck

-that is rolling backwards and forwards.

-And molten metal.

And molten metal.

And you can imagine that the inevitable did happen.

At least once, the whole thing went over.

And unfortunately, it did catch several people,

including one of the apprentices, who was the son of the captain.

Was it less or more of a challenge than actually building

another rudder at sea?

If it had been my decision, I would have probably chickened out

-and I would have headed for Port Elizabeth.

-I'd be in your gang.

Honest, Cap'n.

Captain Moodie's decision to build a replacement rudder at sea

had been a bold one.

But it would cost him dearly.

His son was permanently disfigured by the forge accident

and his ship was about to be overtaken by her archrival.

The Thermopylae had passed the stricken clipper

off the South African coast and forged 500 miles ahead...

..eventually reaching London nine days before her.

Back home, the race had been lost,

but as far as the British public were concerned,

the real victory belonged to the Cutty Sark.

News of the exploits of Captain Moodie and his crew

spread like wildfire.

They became heroes,

not only because of their incredible seamanship

but also due to their extraordinary courage

in the pursuit of British trade...and pride.

The clipper might have been forging lasting trade links with new

parts of the world, but the sail ship was rapidly becoming

an outdated mode of transport.

Steam was now the dominant force in the tea runs.

This was a crisis.

To put that crisis in context, imagine it this way.

On her maiden voyage to China,

the Cutty Sark brought back 500 tonnes of black tea.

That's enough to fill 580 million of these little things -

tea bags.

But by the time of her fifth voyage six years later,

that cargo had been cut by half.

The reality was that steamships could carry twice

the amount of tea and could get to port in half the time of sail.

The Cutty Sark was only three years old but already a relic.

Captain Moodie knew it and abandoned ship to join the steamer fleets.

But old "White Hat" Willis refused to accept reality.

He obviously had great determination as a man.

And he wanted to prove that his flagship clipper could

actually pay for itself.

That's a tall order.

Ironically, demand for tea had never been greater,

but for the Cutty Sark, it was clear that her tea running days were over.

Commerce had rendered her redundant and the little clipper

was about to set sail on the darkest chapter in her story -

a series of terrible voyages spanning half a decade that

would become known as the hell ship years.

The Cutty Sark began tramping -

the rather unflattering term given to ships that would wander

the world's ports picking up whatever rogue cargoes they could.

And the reputation of a tramping ship was an unenviable one.

Nobody, absolutely nobody, wanted to work on a tramping ship.

It was like being a beggar of the sea.

And the captains knew this.

And they had to fill these bunks with sailors -

two to a bunk, by the way -

so they were forced to choose between all the vagabonds

and rogues of the ocean,

men of highly dubious character.

The Cutty Sark's new captain,

James Smith Wallace,

had the unenviable job of skippering the clipper

in these circumstances.

And he had his work cut out.

For amongst his crew of 21 was a fiery first mate called

Sydney "Bucko" Smith

and a new deck hand named William Francis.

And the thing is, William H Francis and "Bucko" Smith,

the first mate, were destined never to be pals.

Some say they simply did not get along,

whilst others claim the dislike was born of skin colour.

For Francis was black and racism was commonplace.

The result was trouble.

Smith and Francis' mutual loathing

would come to a head on the 11th of July, 1880,

when the ship was about a week short of the Indonesian port of Anyar.

As chance would have it,

Smith and Francis ended up on the same watch together.

And according to official reports,

Smith gave Francis a direct order, which he disobeyed.

What Smith attempted to do next was put Francis in shackles.

Francis, being equally quick of temper,

retaliated and attacked his first mate with an iron bar.

There was a short, sharp struggle

while the "Bucko" mate gained possession of the bar.

Then it was the irate officer's turn,

and without a moment's hesitation,

Smith brought it down on the man's head with such force that

Francis dropped senseless to the deck.

Life aboard a 19th-century sailing ship must have been really hard.

There were fallings out, tempers flared.

So murder in those circumstances was not uncommon.

But it was what happened next that makes this story truly remarkable.

Smith was duly shackled

and logged in his cabin as the ship made for port, where

he would be tried for murder, as was normal in these circumstances.

But as the Cutty Sark docked in Anyar,

it became clear that Smith had mysteriously disappeared.

The log details are surprisingly hazy.

But rumours began to circulate that it was in fact the captain

who had aided and abetted his first mate's escape.

Perhaps because he was sympathetic to the murder of a Negro.

Wallace, of course, pleaded ignorance,

but his crew weren't listening

because they all felt that he was complicit in the escape

of a fugitive, and the result was inevitable - it was mutiny.

The ship was reduced to just a handful of men who agreed to work.

But the Cutty Sark's huge rig was almost impossible to operate

with so few hands, and she quickly became becalmed.

Wallace knew that the way in which he had dealt with the Smith

incident meant that he had lost the respect of his men

and his short-lived captaincy was over.

So in the early hours of September 4th, 1880,

he jumped overboard to his death.

But what became of the famous fugitive, Sydney Smith?

I'm hoping genealogist Caroline Gurney will be able to shed

some light on the Cutty Sark's greatest villain.

Where did he go? What happened to him?

He went over the side of the ship onto a boat,

to an American ship called the Colorado.

Changed his name to John Anderson

and then he sailed on American ships

for about two years, on a variety of them,

and eventually, in June, 1882, he came back into London

on an American clipper into the South West India dock.

And it was really unlucky for him because just a few weeks earlier,

the crew of the Cutty Sark had finally come back

from that hell ship voyage.

So it was a member of the Cutty Sark crew who spotted him.

It was several. They were in London, in the docks.

I think he perhaps was talking too much in the pub one night.

He was picked up and arrested

and taken to the Thames Police Court in the docks.

-That's what you call bad timing.

-Absolutely appalling timing, yes.

So justice finally caught up with Smith.

He would go on to serve seven years in prison.

"A number of witnesses deposed to his good character for humanity

"and kindness of disposition."

But Caroline's research suggests there might be another side

to the character of Sydney "Bucko" Smith.

What is your impression of him? Do you think he was a bad guy?

Was he a good guy?

I think there is slightly more nuance than perhaps

the official record, if you like.

When he left London in the Cutty Sark

in May, 1880,

he was signed on as first mate at a wage of seven pounds a month.

And three pounds of that wage was given to his old mum.

That's a slightly different image, isn't it, then that hard-bitten mate?

There is a real sense of kind of familial duty there, yeah.

I want to find out more about the Cutty Sark's infamous first mate.

But back on board the hell ship years,

it was 1880 and things were going from bad to worse.

Her crew had mutinied and their captain was now dead.

What the Cutty Sark's owner, John Willis, must have been thinking

when he received word of his flagship clipper's latest

calamity, we can only imagine.

Willis chose a former first mate, William Bruce,

to be the new captain of the Cutty Sark.

He was a Christian, he was an evangelist,

a man who loved his Bible and who lived by it

and who preached it to his crews twice a day.

So, a man of God had been put in charge of a ship from hell.

You couldn't make it up!

But would William Bruce prove to be the Cutty Sark's saviour?

# You can run on for a long time. #

Unfortunately, religion always came second to a drink

for Captain Bruce.

And that spelt disaster for the Cutty Sark.

For almost two whole years,

the Cutty Sark's alcoholic captain drifted aimlessly around

the Pacific, looking at the world through a haze of prayer and booze.

Bad navigation by an intoxicated skipper

nearly put the clipper onto the rocks.

For a time,

Bruce navigated the Cutty Sark,

plying his two senior officers with grog.

Soon, they were beginning to starve.

# Tell 'em that God's gonna cut you down. #

It had been exactly 706 days

since the Cutty Sark had left London.

Her crew were dead on their feet,

her captain was useless.

There was no option, the authorities had to be informed.

And what that meant was that one of Britain's great trading ships

was out of business.

When word of the Cutty Sark's latest calamity reached Willis,

this debacle was the final straw.

His flagship clipper had run to ruin.

Once the great trade pioneer,

she was now the laughing stock of the maritime world.

The Cutty Sark's darkest chapter had come to a terrible end,

but genealogist Caroline Gurney has unearthed new information

about its greatest villain - Sydney "Bucko" Smith.

She has sent me to this Kent village to meet two people

who may be able to shed new light on an old mystery.

I'm Merle Carmichael, originally Merle Irene Smith,

and I am Sydney William Smith's granddaughter.

And I am John Sydney Smith, I am also a Sydney Smith

and the Smith we are talking about was my grandfather.

I had been hearing these wonderful,

dastardly stories of Sydney "Bucko" Smith,

who ruled the ocean with a rod of iron,

and was eventually charged with

the murder of a fellow seaman

and sentenced to seven years hard labour.

Is that the truth?

Well, I was told by my father, who was also a master mariner,

that it was in self-defence.

And that it was manslaughter and not murder.

My grandfather is always described as a bucko mate.

I mean, what does that mean?

That sounds like an Australian term.

Yeah, it sounds like an Australian term.

I would be quite happy to go along with the idea that he was

-a disciplinarian, all right?

-Yes.

-But then he had to be.

-He had to be, yes.

-He had to be.

-He was first mate.

He was in charge of a mixed crew.

They were smoking opium

and he was one man trying to maintain discipline amongst

a group of people who weren't always willing to corporate, shall we say.

And, I think in Francis, he may well have had

something of a troublemaker there who was looking for problems.

So, do you think history has misjudged your grandfather?

I think... Yeah, I think it has actually.

My feeling is that a grave miscarriage of justice

took place here.

It would be good to clear his name, certainly.

That would be...that would be extremely good.

This is a head-and-shoulders of him.

We will never truly know whether Sydney Smith was a villain or

a hero, but as he moved on with his life...

In 1885, as the Cutty Sark lay marooned in a harbour in New York,

she began to reinvent herself and re-enter the trade race...

with a vengeance.

For the little clipper was about to begin the most celebrated

chapter in her story, and in the most unlikely of places.

A brave new world where she would find salvation, new-found riches

and the lasting legacy that her owner had always dreamed of.

Australia.

And that all started with these shaggy creatures - sheep.

Wool was vitally important to the second stage

of the Cutty Sark's illustrious history.

Australia was a rapidly expanding British colony in the late 1800s.

Pursuit of gold and agricultural riches made it the promised

land for many merchants.

But wool stood head and shoulders above everything as the most

valuable commodity of them all.

Australia's wool industry from its earliest days

in the 1800s grew at an extraordinary rate.

But it was the very special, unique qualities of the magical wool

called merino that made the difference.

This wool is seriously, seriously thick.

You can feel it, it's like the thickest rug.

Absolutely extraordinary.

You just can't imagine that, once this is tweaked out,

it becomes our jumpers and our sweaters and our socks.

Or our fine wool suits.

Absolutely brilliant.

Wool had become the oil of its day, and extremely valuable

colonial export, and John Willis saw his opportunity to follow the money.

But he wasn't alone.

As with tea, there was a huge demand for this new commodity.

This created an annual race to collect the new season's wool

from Australian ports and deliver it in time for the London sales.

And so, the wool races were born.

Just like the tea trade,

Willis faced fierce competition from steamships.

But in the Cutty Sark, he still had by far the fastest ship.

What he needed now was a strong-minded individual...

..a natural leader of men, hard men,

and of course,

an expert seaman to captain his dream ship,

someone who could at last bring out the true potential

of his Cutty Sark.

And he would find that man in Richard Woodget, a brave

and fiercely competitive captain widely regarded

as one of the finest seamen of his generation.

Woodget would become the Cutty Sark's longest-serving

and most successful helmsman, sailing her for ten years

and into the glory days of the wool races.

The little clipper finally had the captain

she had always deserved,

and the world was about to see what she could do.

In her very first wool voyage in 1886, the clipper sailed from

Sydney to London in just 84 days,

beating her rival by almost a month.

The following year, she did even better, returning in just 80 days.

And by 1888, Captain Woodget had clocked up the fastest time

ever recorded between Sydney and London,

reaching the British capital in just 73 days.

"All our rivals are days astern."

The Cutty Sark has fully proved her right to be considered

the fastest ship in the wool trade, which at this time,

means the fastest ship in the world.

Revenge was indeed sweet for the Cutty Sark and its owner.

Woodget was not only a master of speed,

he was also noted for being able to load more cargo into his hold

then any other ship in the trade.

With 4,500 bales

and a payload of the highest quality merino wool,

Willis was making a fortune from every return trip to Australia

and at the same time, achieving his dream of doing

it in the fastest possible time.

And then, in 1891, he even outran the Britannia,

the fastest steamship of her day.

Willis must've been overjoyed.

And with these record-breaking speeds, came lasting fame,

both in Australia and Britain.

Wool had made the Cutty Sark a star

and her exploits were helping transform this new

colony into the most important trading hotspot in the world.

Wool historian Lisa Murray has come to tell me more.

It was just an amazing era in Australian history,

and it was so important

for the way that Australia's economy developed.

And how important was that wonderful, beautiful, sleek,

feminine ship, the Cutty Sark,

-in the late 19th century to all of this?

-She was integral.

She was the clipper that took the bulk,

the bulky, big woollen bales,

took them after they were sold and rushed them back to Britain.

She was the sort of, I guess,

the symbol of the ties between Australia and Britain.

And she was the symbol of really the strength of the Australian economy.

Without ships like the Cutty Sark, Australia wouldn't have been

able to export its wool and it wouldn't be the country it is today.

With the success of the wool trade,

the Cutty Sark could not only forge the very special

relationship between the UK and Australia,

she had also become a household name on both sides of the globe.

Her legend was finally born.

But the Cutty Sark's success in the new world was once

again about to be threatened by her old rival.

By the 1890s, the steamship was now moving in on the wool industry,

just as it had done with tea.

Now sadly,

payloads began to dwindle yet again

in the Australian ports.

And with it, crew members,

as the Cutty Sark began to be emptied not just of wool, but

of people, as large-scale desertion to the promised land took hold.

The wool industry had introduced clipper sailors to Australia.

And in this brave new world, many found the answers to their dreams.

There was gold in the hills.

They had golden beaches and endless hours of glorious sunshine.

To the Brits, who were fed up with cold, wet Britain,

this was seen as the promised land, a land of milk and honey,

and they came in their thousands.

Crewmen began to use the clipper passage as a one-way ticket

to a new life.

And by the end of the 1800s, more than half of the men who sailed

the Cutty Sark to Australia would desert as soon as they arrived here.

And the result of this was the first truly significant

migration of Brits and British culture to this new country

over 10,000 miles away on the other side of the world.

And these first migrants began to lay down the foundations

of a Commonwealth tradition that is still alive today.

And the impact of the traditions they brought with them

has ingrained itself into the very fabric of Aussie life.

Social historian Richard Waterhouse has come along to the cricket

to tell me more.

Richard, behind us here is what I regard as the quintessentially

English game of cricket.

And I guess, for me, it kind of embodies the influence...

the influences that Brits

and British culture has had in this continent.

Well, I think it does.

And British sports and the way in which they are played

in Australia did a great deal to reinforce that Britishness.

And it wasn't just in sport, was it? It was... It must have been...

And your legal system and your political set-ups.

Generally, we believe that the English legal system has

played a civilising role in Australian society.

And in abiding by that law,

then we will become an ordered

and an orderly and a democratic society.

How strong were the religious influences on Australian culture?

Well, generally people think of Australia as being a very

irreligious country, but in fact,

we became a very religious country, which resulted in turning

Sunday into a very, very dull day indeed in Australia.

And it lasted for a century.

Not until the 1960s did what we call the British Sunday begin to

disappear in Australia.

The British Sunday... I remember

in my childhood in Glasgow, I always thought Sundays were

the dreariest days.

Inevitably, they were rainy.

They were wet and miserable and there was nothing to do.

The Cutty Sark and its deserting sailors who were fleeing

rainy Britain certainly left a lasting mark on this land.

But by 1895, the industry that brought them here was dead,

as the steamer fleets put them out of business.

Willis gave up on his dream of Australian wool.

And I guess the brutal reality is that

in the age of steam,

sail ships, no matter how fast

or how beautiful or how unique,

were no longer part of the story.

But sadly, it also meant that

she would no longer be a British ship.

And so the Cutty Sark was sold to a Portuguese shipping merchant

and renamed the Ferreira.

Rumours circulated in Britain as to her fate.

Had she been scrapped?

Or was she a Portuguese warship fighting in the Great War?

In 1922,

a retired sea captain was taking a walk one evening

around this Cornish harbour

and his attention was drawn to a battered old ship moored in the bay.

Now, even though she had changed, her shape,

her look over the years, the old boy instantly recognised her as the

Cutty Sark, the very same ship that had surged past him

27 years earlier -

a sight never to be forgotten.

His name was Wilfred Dowman,

and he was determined to save the Cutty Sark.

And as luck would have it, he had the money to do it.

So with great love and care,

Dowman restored her to pristine clipper condition.

And then, for the next 14 years,

the Cutty Sark became a permanent fixture in Falmouth Harbour,

a living testament to Britain's glorious maritime heritage.

Following Dowman's death in 1936,

the Cutty Sark became a gift to the nation,

changing hands a number of times over the ensuing years

before eventually becoming part

of the Greenwich National Maritime Museum in 1951.

It gives me very great pleasure

to come to Greenwich today,

to see Cutty Sark,

the last of the clippers, in her permanent dry bed.

But that's not the end of our story,

for this grand old lady of the sea had one last tale to tell.

In 2007, the ship was in the midst of a multimillion-pound overhaul

to return her to her original Clydeside condition.

But on the morning of the 21st of May, disaster struck.

The 19th-century tea clipper the Cutty Sark is on fire.

Look at the size of that fire. It is being refurbished at the moment.

Sparked by an electrical fault, pictures of the inferno that

followed suggested a total catastrophe.

100%, we have heard from the spokeswoman, of the vessel is

ablaze. These are the latest moving pictures we have just got in.

But yet again, the Cutty Sark's hardy design

and iconic status would ensure that much of her would be saved.

Cutty Sark chairman Richard Doughty

was one of the first to arrive at the scene.

Didn't you have an extraordinary reaction from the Fire Brigade?

Well, they were marvellous, you know,

because the fire officers,

instead of sending three appliances

down to Cutty Sark, sent 11.

You know. And without a shadow of a doubt, we have

the fire service to thank for still having Cutty Sark after all

these years. Now, this is a real fighter.

This ship has got through hurricanes and storms.

-But it all comes from a love and a passion for her.

-It does.

-That's the thing.

-From ordinary people.

We had mailbags, full mailbags coming to our offices

with cheques, with notes,

with children's coins put in envelopes, you know,

"Have my pocket money for Cutty Sark."

-It was very moving.

-Doesn't that cover you in goose bumps?

-It does.

People think of it as their own, and that really is what saved the ship.

The Cutty Sark fire

and this outpouring of support showed just how much she was loved.

But ironically, it also resulted in a total rethink

about how the ship should be preserved for the next generation.

Fire damage had further weakened the ship's already flimsy hull

and the restoration team needed to find a way of relieving

the Cutty Sark of her own crippling weight.

So what did they do?

Well, they decided not to float her on water,

but on thin air.

And this is a magnificent result -

probably one of the most detailed ship preservation projects

ever undertaken.

She eventually opened to the public in 2012,

and they have been coming in the thousands ever since.

The Cutty Sark is embedded in the public imagination

because she tells the story of our glorious past.

How she created lasting colonial links through trade.

How she shaped and touched the places she visited

and left a wonderful cultural legacy in her wake.

That is why she remains a true icon of the seas.

When I think of how she was dreamt up

and built on the River Clyde in that small shipyard in Dumbarton,

where I used to play as a boy,

I don't know about you,

but it certainly fills my heart with pride.

Next time, I'll be looking at the role a Clydebuilt steamer

played in arguably the most important technological

development in the modern world -

connecting Britain with the rest of the planet

and changing the way we communicate, even today.

But it is also the story of the crucial part that this ship

played in the most famous maritime disaster in history

and of an intriguing mystery that would take over a century

to solve.

What on earth has this little pair of shoes

got to do with the world's worst maritime disaster?