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
Clipper route "Cutty Sark" made the fastest passage on this route by a clipper, in 72 days. "Thermopylae" made the slightly shorter passage from London to Melbourne, , in just 61 days in 1868–69. The following map traces the outbound route of the 1874 voyage from London to Adelaide, South Australia, of the clipper ship "City of Adelaide", which today is the world's oldest surviving clipper ship. The latitudes and longitudes are obtained from the surviving diary of 21-year-old passenger James McLauchlan. The return passage continued east from Australia; ships stopping at Wellington would pass through the Cook Strait, but otherwise this