After visitin the Greenwich Park, we would take a boating trip on the river Thames. On the way to the pier, we had a hurry look at the Cutty Sark Clipper Ship, which was built for John Willis to be the fastest clipper on the China tea route. Cutty Sark was launched at Dumbarton on the Clyde on Monday 22nd November 1869. She worked the China tea routfrom 1870 until 1877, then for the next five years she carried general cargo. In 1885 she began the Australian wool trade, and it was on this hard route that she proved she was the fastest ship of her time, with a passage from Newcastle in New South Wales to Deal in Kent in only 82 days. In 1895 she was sold to the Portuguese and twenty seven years later, in Falmouth, was seen and purchased by Captain Wilfred Dowman, returning again to the British flag. After some restoration, she was donated to HMS Worcester as a training vessel for cadets at Greenwich, and in 1953 was handed over as a gift to the Cutty Sark Preservation Society. However, on 21st May 2007 a fire swept through the famous 19th Century ship Cutty Sark. The Cutty Sark, was undergoing a £25m restoration in a dry dock at Greenwich in south-east London. A Cutty Sark Trust spokesman said much of the ship had been removed for retoration and the damage could have been worse.
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