The Last of the Tea Clippers

by Eric Kentley

This is the story of one of the most famous ships in the world. Cutty Sark was famous during her working life as one of the fastest of all clippers. But her survival for almost a century and a half is remarkable.

Completed despite her builders’ bankruptcy, sailing rudderless in the indian ocean, losing her trade to steamships (twice) and coming close to being wrecked several times. Even after ‘retiring’ from commercial trade in the 1920s, she narrowly missed being broken up on a number of occasions.

The book has been developed from the onset in close conjunction with the Cutty Sark Trust and takes the form of a chronological building and career narrative but also presents detailed crew accounts, log entries, feature sections on seamanship, ports and cargoes and broader tall ship structure. This is the first publication to include specially commissioned photography created as part of, and subsequent to, the clipper’s conservation as well as the findings of resulting research.

This is an very good book with some excellent photographs and old plans of the vessels and i would highly recommend it to our readers.

Hardback: 268mm x 198mm, 196 pp illustrated

Price: £20