Not much of a tea party...
 

Sad news - the old tea-clipper 'Cutty Sark' went up in flames this morning at 04.00 hrs London time. She was undergoing renovation. Looks like the job will be much bigger now as a result. Foul play suspected....

Story and pics here

That is pretty sad. I am sure there were a bunch of folks who put hours of work into that thing.

We walked past it last Bank Holiday (it's about a 10 minute walk from my new place) and I said, "Ooh I haven't been round that since I was a child" to which my HM responded, "We'll go round it when you move down."

Sigh, I guess we won't now.

Not that we could have at the time of course, it was behind hoardings under renovation. But it's still sad to think that was my last chance to see it.

It's not lost, just very sad. It's now going to take longer and more money to put it back to sea.
I don't understand why a group of people would want to burn this ship, unless they only intended a small fire to generate public interest, but got out of hand.

Well it is London, so they were seen on CCTV and will probably be caught.

Very true Bruce - only last night on the news it was reported again that a UK London-based citizen can expect to be captured on a camera up to 300 times a day (and that figure is 3 years old) - we're all movie stars here!

I was listening to the reports on NPR and BBC America this morning. Fortunately, many of the really important bits, (wheel, mast, wheel house) were elsewhere for renovation. Early reports stated that much of the damage was to the deck, which was already scheduled to be replaced, and that the ironwork was not badly malformed.

It could have been a lot worse.

I do hope they catch the bastard who did it. Maybe a he can work off his sentence by providing a live demonstration of those two quaint forms of British naval discipline, flogging and keel hauling.

Followed by hanging from the yardarm, once it's back in place. The link said it appeared to be more than one person. I wonder if there was any insurance?

Gotta love the old boats, ditto on the keel hawl.

Apparently CNN first reported it as the Cutty Shark and that all passengers had been evacuated! :lol:

Tea? Isn't that the ship on the booze bottle?

Maybe they were trading Scotch for the tea?