Cutty Sark wind. The ship was named after Cutty-sark, the nickname of the witch Nannie Dee in Robert Burns's 1791 poem "Tam o' Shanter". The ship's figurehead, the original of which has been attributed to carver Fredrick Hellyer of Blackwall, is a stark white carving of a bare-breasted Nannie Dee with long black hair holding a grey horse's tail in her hand. In the poem she wore a linen (Scots: a short chemise or undergarment), that she had been given as a child, which explains why it was "cutty", or in other words far too short. The erotic sight of her dancing
Cutty Sark external timbers were secured by Muntz metal (brass) bolts to the internal iron frame and the hull covered by Muntz sheeting up to the depth mark. The stem () and sternpost () were of teak while the rudder was of English oak. The keel was replaced in the 1920s with one constructed from pitch pine. The deck was made of thick teak while the 'tween deck was yellow pine. Her length was with a draft of and a deadweight of 921 tons. The maximum logged speed for "Cutty Sark" was . The speed of a sailing ship is not so