University Helps Save Cutty Sark
The University of Greenwich is playing a key role in rescuing Cutty Sark, the Victorian sailing ship that has become a national icon and is now undergoing a £25m conservation programme.
Researchers are using software predictions to ensure the fragile, 137 year-old ship is dismantled and restored in the safest possible way. Three years ago a report predicted it would fall apart within 10 years if nothing was done.
The Cutty Sark Trust, the charity responsible for the ship, feared the very act of restoration could endanger it. Professor Chris Bailey and project associate Dr Stoyan Stoyanov of the School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, together with Peter Mason, Chief Engineer of the trust, have developed and validated finite element analysis techniques to test how the wood and metal components would behave in various renovation scenarios.
Their advice formed part of the submission to the Heritage Lottery Fund which won £13m towards the project. Professor Bailey says: “We have successfully completed a two-year project, delivering over 40 reports including material that helped secure the lottery funding. We’ve also identified the best way to support the ship in the future which will reduce capital costs by £500,000 and long term maintenance by £200,000.”
Now the university will continue to work with the trust in the longer-term project to conserve the ship as a visitor attraction and heritage site. Peter Mason says: “We’ve had a very successful partnership so far, which we want to continue on two special projects: the first is to develop a model of how the ship is deteriorating so we know how to conserve it over the next 50 years. The second is to investigate why she was so fast.” The university will apply the kind of modern computational tools used today to design a Formula One racing car to explore her hydrodynamics. The resulting software will be used in visitor displays.
The Royal Academy of Engineering has praised the university’s contribution saying the Cutty Sark Trust benefited “from state-of-the-art academic resources… using the university’s intellectual capability, access to very powerful computers and a world-class library of software.”(1)
Editor’s notes
- The ship is now being dismantled; the 100ft masts have been sent to Chatham’s Historic Dockyard for storage. There will be a public exhibition on the site from spring 2007 and hard-hat tours; the trust plans to re-open Cutty Sark in its new state-of-the-art exhibition space in winter 2008.
- Cutty Sark has caused excitement since she was launched in 1869 to bring back tea from China. “It became fashionable to drink the freshest tea and particularly from the first ship to arrive with that season’s cargo. The first tea brought home therefore commanded a premium price”.(2) She was the fastest ship of her day and designed more like a racing yacht than a cargo vessel. Richard Dimbleby covered the opening ceremony at Greenwich, performed by the Queen, in 1957 live on TV and early editions of Blue Peter used images in its opening titles. UNESCO said, when Maritime Greenwich became a World Heritage Site in 1997, that the ship was “of international importance, a major tourist attraction and, to many, one of the most potent symbols of Britain’s maritime pre-eminence in the nineteenth century”.
For more information, interviews and images please contact:
Hester Brown
Public Relations
University of Greenwich
020 8331 7663
Mob: 07876 193481
Hester.Brown@gre.ac.uk
Cutty Sark Trust
Anna Somerset
020 8858 2698
a.somerset@cuttysark.org.uk
www.cuttysark.org.uk
1. The Royal Academy of Engineering, June 2006, response to Government consultation, Science and innovation investment framework 2004-2014: “The university has acted as a specialist and independent resource to the Office of the Project Director and in particular to its chief engineer. Their work has concentrated on both complex structural finite element analysis and computational fluid dynamics using the university’s intellectual capability, access to very powerful computers and a world-class library of software. The university has been deliberately kept in the role of informing and educating the client, rather than being employed in the design production as a nominated sub-consultant. This approach gives additional strength to the client…”
2. Cutty Sark Conservation Plan vol. 3: Significance, pg.10