Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Up in flames

A piece of history went up in flames yesterday as the Cutty Sark burned in its dry dock in Greenwich, England. This ship was one of the fastest of its kind in the 19th century. It raced Thermopylae from China to England, in the vast tea trade. The Thermopylae won, but the Cutty Sark spent over 100 days of the journey on an improvised rudder and still managed to come in just one week behind the winner. Not too shabby.

The team that was restoring the ship is not going to abandon their task even though the fire gutted the thing. It was awesome to see it in person, but all the doorways were five feet tall. This would be a great opportunity for the restoration team to adjust the design numbers for inflation, vertical inflation that is.

No comments: