Text Only About this Site Legal & Copyright
PortCities UK
 
Bristol
Hartlepool
Liverpool
London
Southampton
*
    Back to Woolwich ship launches
*
* *
*

Clipper

Tea clipper Cutty Sark.
View full size image Tea clipper Cutty Sark. © NMM
A 'clipper' is a general 19th-century term  for a fast sailing ship, with rakish lines and rig, though not of a strict single form. Cutty Sark (1869) is the sole surviving clipper, having been built to race home from China with the new season's tea crop in order to gain the highest prices on the London market.