Good photo reference books for Cutty Sark?

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   One of the best original photograph of the CUTTY Sark was taken by her captain, Richard Woodget, in Sydney Harbor, Australia in the mid-1880s, while his ship was waiting to take on a cargo of wool before returning to England. Captain Woodget had a bulky and heavy camera, which did not stop him from taking many of the priceless photos of this famous tea clipper.

             Montani semper liberi !    Happy modeling to all and every one of you.

                                         Crackers                   

Jim, I would love to see the original photo's of the Cutty Sark. I am just about to build her.

Re the webshots album those are my own photographs and I would be happy to send the originals to anyone who needs them.  I didn't realise that you couldn't download them from webshots, maybe I should post them on another host?

Jim

I bought my copy of Longridge's Cutty Sark book about 35 years ago.  It's a "two-volumes-in-one" edition, published by Sweetman Reprints.  There's a set of plans, by Harold Underhill, folded up in a pocket inside the back cover.

The plans are good (Underhill was one of the best in the business), but nowhere near as detailed as the George Campbell set.  One reason for that is that Underhill was working in (I think) the 1930s, when the ship was still in service as a training vessel.  When she was restored, moved to her drydock at Greenwich, and put on public view, in the 1950s, a good deal of research was done to establish her "as built" configuration, and quite a few changes were made to her.  (It was at that time also that Mr. Campbell, who was the naval architect in charge of the restoration, drew his plans of her - the ones that are sold by the ship's gift shop.)  I don't remember what all the changes were; I do know that they included some alterations of the trail boards and headrails. 

The Longridge book deserves every bit of its status as a classic tome of ship modeling.  Just how much use it will be for the modern modeler is a little hard to say.  In terms of information about the hull and deck furniture, I'm not at all sure Longridge has any more to offer than the Campbell general arrangement drawing.  When it comes to the rigging, the biggest advantage provided by the book may be Longridge's verbal descriptions of how the lines lead.  The Campbell "Rigging Plan" and "Sail Plan" are superb, but so much information is crammed into them that it may be a little difficult to sort out just how some of the rigging works. 

Two other publications about the ship come to mind.  The Log of the Cutty Sark, by Basil Lubbock, is the best (and longest) history of the ship herself.  And when the big 1950s/1960s restoration was completed, the chairman of the committee in charge of it, Frank G.G. Carr, delivered a paper about it to the Royal Institution of Naval Architects.  The paper was published in the July, 1966 Quarterly Transactions of that organization, which later published it as a stand-alone booklet.  The ship's gift shop used to sell copies; I picked one up the first time I visited her, in 1978, and lost it sometime thereafter.  A year or so I found another copy on the web; I don't remember how much it cost, but it wasn't unreasonable and I bought it.  The title is "The Restoration of the Cutty Sark."  It contains lots of fascinating information - much of which I haven't seen elsewhere - about just what was done to her before she went on public exhibition - and why.  It also contains some photos (all black-and-white) that I haven't seen elsewhere.  Highly recommended - if you can find it.

I have The Cutty Sark, The ship and a model book , a 1982 edition published by MAP.

On the flysheet it refers to this edition combining the two original volumes in one book.

The edition I have is smaller in size than his book on Victory measuring 14.4mm x 22.5mm and containing over 450 pages. The drawings are however contained with the book dimensions and do not consist of fold out plans, as with the Anatomy of the Ship book, and are consequently quite small.

A nice book to have though.

One final book-related question to add to this thread (again, thanks to all for the helpful links): I've found three Longridge books related to the Cutty Sark: "The Cutty Sark, the Last of the Famous Tea Clippers" which is split into 2 volumes, one covering the hull, deck and fittings, the other the masts/spars and rigging; and ""Cutty Sark": The Ship and a Model". Which is the best one to go for? - does the "Ship and a Model" book have the same content as the other 2 volumes, or is it an entirely seperate publication? I'm inclined to think that volume 1 of the first book would be the best choice, seeing as I already have the rigging plans from the ship's gift shop.

The "Cutty Sark - Ferreira" book does sound good but, being on a limited budget, I think I'd want to see the contents before spending £20+ shipping on it.

Nice pictures, steves; many thanks.

If you zoom in on the second picture from the left in the third row, you can read the dreaded Willis motto.

There are some on-line photos at the SMML website:

http://smmlonline.com/reference/walkabouts/cutty_sark/cutty_sark.html

Some hull shots with close-ups of the bow and stern, but nothing on board.

Wasn't one of the 1970's "Airfix" books on the Cutty Sark? Although it was intended for detailing the plastic kit, it may contain some useful information and pictures.

Rick

I'm not familiar with the Richardson book; I do have the other two.

The Longridge one is a classic.  It describes, in considerable detail, how he built the 1/48-scale model that's now exhibited at the Science Museum in London.  Longridge was one of the real founders of modern "serious" scale ship modeling.  It does need to be remembered, though, that he was writing - and modeling - in the 1920s and 30s.  Like every other modeler, he got better as he got more experienced; if you look at his Victory and Cutty Sark you have no trouble figuring out that the former was built at least twenty years after the latter.  Some of the details on that Longridge's Cutty Sark frankly don't come up to the standards of modern kits.  (His renditions of the cargo winches on the main deck, for instance, are highly simplified; the relevant parts in the old Revell, Airfix, and Imai kits - on much smaller scales - make them look pretty crude.)  He didn't  have access to many of the tools and materials that we take for granted nowadays; many of the techniques he describes (e.g., silver-soldering with a contraption called a "blowpipe") are pretty irrelevant for modern modelers.  But with those caveats the book is excellent.  The information on the rigging is particularly good - and just about as relevant to the modeler working from a kit as

The Bowness book originally appeared as a series of articles in a British magazine.  It tells how to build a relatively small (1/192, if I remember right), simplified, but basically sound model of the ship.  I think it was originally published in the early 1950s (or maybe earlier).  Again, it's inevitably a product of its time - a most interesting museum piece for those who want to know what the hobby was like in the days before modern kits became available.  I'm not sure that it would be of much practical use as a guide for building a model from a Billing kit, but it's enjoyable and interesting to read.

Thanks again for the help. I found the webshots link through a Google search but it doesn't seem to let you save the images to your PC; would registering on the website solve this?
(edit: registering still won't let you save them as simple .JPG files, but it is possible to do so by saving the entire page to disk, then finding the image file which ends in "_ph.jpg")

One further question, a search turned up these reference books, none of which seem to be too hard to find or expensive:

"Cutty Sark": The Ship and a Model by C. Nepean Longridge (who also wrote the excellent "The Anatomy of Nelson's Ships")
"Cutty Sark" - "Ferreira" by John Richardson (apparently contains 130+ photos as well as drawings, history etc.)
Modelling The Cutty Sark by Edward Bowness

Any comments as to what any of these are like?

There are quite a few good shots on the ship's website, but some of their locations aren't obvious.  Some of the most useful for modeling purposes are in the "Photo Diary" of the conservation project:   http://www.cuttysark.org.uk/index.cfm?fa=contentGeneric.gjonoksenppnlohb&pageId=153702 .  Click on any of the dates in the left-hand column.

Some months back (or maybe it was longer ago; my poor old brain has trouble with such things these days) that website contained a lengthy narrative description of the condition the ship was in when the restoration started - complete with details of when each extant part had been installed.  (A surprising percentage of the original fabric, it seems, was still there in 2007.)  That section of the site also contained lots of photos and measured drawings.  But I wasn't able to find it this time.  I imagine the site is under constant revision as the great day of the ship's reopening to the public approaches.  The management is now saying it will happen in 2010.

Sorry to ask yet another question - but does anyone know of a good online source of Cutty Sark photos? The official site has some nice photos, but not many of them; a Google search hasn't turned up much so far. The best I've found is MaritimeQuest's page http://www.maritimequest.com/sailing_ships/cutty_sark_1869_page_1.htm. I'm particularly looking for on-deck photos of the deckhouses, fittings, bulwarks, etc.

I certainly wish I'd visited the ship myself before it closed for restoration!

Thanks for the reply! Looks like downloading + printing the photos is the way to go then. I already have the plans (two sheets, one general arrangement, the other rigging) which I bought from the gift shop a few years ago (after the ship was closed for restoration, but before the fire) which should be very useful.

If anyone's interested, the Cutty Sark model I am (or will be in future, once I've finished some current projects) building isn't one of the various plastic kit but a semi-scratchbuilt model based on a Billing Boats 1/72 wood model. I bought this for £10 in a junk shop a couple of years ago - most of the deck fittings are damaged or missing and it wasn't built or painted very well in the first place. All of the masts/spars and the basic hull shape are usable, as are some of the  fittings, but the deckhouses along with a lot of the deck fittings and hull structural detail will have to be scratchbuilt or adapted from spares-box or commercial parts. I also plan to replank the deck as the existing one is just printed sheet wood (and is rather warped + cracked).

Good point.  Now that you mention it, though I've bumped into quite a few photos of the Cutty Sark they seem to be scattered around in all sorts of books - and good, modern color shots don't seem to be numerous.  The world really needs a nice, big, not-too-expensive "coffee-table book" about her - something on the order of the McGowen/McKay book about the Victory.  Maybe the current restoration project - which seems to be well on the road to completion - will result in such a publication.

In the mean time, there are lots of good photos at the ship's website:  http://www.cuttysark.org.uk/index.cfm .  The current restoration has provided some "photo opportunities that haven't existed before; there are some good shots on that site.

Whenever this topic comes up I put in a plug for the George Campbell plans, which are available at a very reasonable price through the ship's gift shop:  http://www.cuttysark.org.uk/index.cfm?fa=contentShop.productList&directoryId=6 .  For some strange reason only the sail and rigging plans seem to be for sale right now; that's unfortunate.  The third sheet, which shows the exterior and interior of the hull, is particularly useful for modelers.  I'm sure there's some other place where the whole set can be bought.  At any rate, the full set of three sheets is, so far as I know, the most comprehensive mass of information about the ship to be found in convenient form anywhere.  And those plans are among the biggest bargains in ship modeling.