Cutty-sark (witch) Cutty-sark (witch) "Cutty sark" is 18th-century Scots for "short chemise" or "short undergarment". Hyphenated, Cutty-sark was a nickname given to the witch Nannie Dee, a fictional character created by Robert Burns in his "Tam o' Shanter", after the garment she wore. The figurehead of the tea clipper "Cutty Sark" is named after the character and a brand of Scotch whisky is named in turn for the ship. "Cutty" or "cuttie" (the diminutive form of "cuttit", from Early Middle English "cutte", "kutte", "cute" "ugly") is "short" or "stumpy". "Sark" or "serk" (from Old English "serc"; Old Norse "serk") is a "shift",
Great Tea Race of 1866 she was lost either in 1889 or 1893. "Taitsing" continued in the China trade, carrying her last cargo of tea in 1874/75 (101 days Foochow to New York). She was lost on the Quirimbas Islands in 1883, en route from Swansea to Zanzibar. "Cutty Sark", built in 1869, in the belief that the Suez Canal and steamships would not take over the tea trade, remains as virtually the sole physical reminder of the tea clipper era that was epitomised by the Great Tea Race of 1866. Great Tea Race of 1866 In the middle third of the 19th Century, the