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 to a minimum and rigs were often reduced to barque so that a smaller crew was needed. "Cutty Sark"s well known race against "Thermopylae" took place in 1872, the two ships leaving Shanghai together on 18 June. Two weeks later "Cutty Sark" had built up a lead of some , but then lost her rudder in a heavy gale after passing through the Sunda Strait. John Willis's brother was on board the ship and ordered Moodie to put into Cape Town for repairs. Moodie refused, and instead the ship's carpenter Henry Henderson constructed a new rudder from spare timbers and