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My first meeting with the Cuty Sark was a bottle of whisky!I made a small model of this when I was about 10. That glue stings!!
Wow Roger, that must have been some time ago! Certainly time for another visit. Back then the Old Royal Naval College would have been 'the' Royal Naval College, and so closed to the public (they had to keep the nuclear reactor a secret). So things have changed a lot since your last visit.Cool image. Too long since I've been to London, last time I was there she was still wrapped up for the big repair. Time to go back, love England.
I found the date (2011) and one image, she has obviously come a long way!Wow Roger, that must have been some time ago! Certainly time for another visit. Back then the Old Royal Naval College would have been 'the' Royal Naval College, and so closed to the public (they had to keep the nuclear reactor a secret). So things have changed a lot since your last visit.
Roger, that is about a year before the reopening of the Cutty Sark. In 2007 she was undergoing a major restoration, luckily most of the original timbers had been removed, including masts etc. One night, a serious fire broke out on board (I think cleaners had left a vacuum cleaner plugged in) and much of the ship that was left was lost. However, as the original timbers had been removed for restoration, most of what was lost was from an earlier (not very good) restoration from the 50's or 60's. I work at the Old Royal Naval College (University of Greenwich) and ironically on the morning after the fire, I had just started teaching a 5 day short course on Fire Dynamics and Fire Modelling, so I had many senior fire engineers and fire fighters on campus. It was a very sad sight, and at that time we didn't know that most of the original timbers were safe. Anyway, she reopened in full glory in 2012 and looks fabulous. As a point of interest, she is sitting above the dry dock, suspended by steel beams around the hull of the vessel. So she looks like she is sailing on a sea of glass. One of my colleagues (Prof Chris Bailey, who had an office next door to mine) had a significant hand in saving the vessel just before the restoration started. The structural engineers that had designed the supports had made significant errors in their calculations. My colleague used advanced structural modelling techniques to model the vessel and its supports and demonstrated that had the original design been implemented, after a few months the hull of the vessel would have collapsed due to the strains. He redesigned the supports and his design is what is used to suspened the vessel.I found the date (2011) and one image, she has obviously come a long way!
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Roger, correction to my comment above, I thought you were referring to the 60's during the original restoration works, not 2007. See my comment below for further clarification.Wow Roger, that must have been some time ago! Certainly time for another visit. Back then the Old Royal Naval College would have been 'the' Royal Naval College, and so closed to the public (they had to keep the nuclear reactor a secret). So things have changed a lot since your last visit.