Cutty sark disaster

I agree with MJH. 

I'm not going to bother responding to any more posts from searat12 on this thread.  It should be obvious by now that neither of us is interested in the other's opinions - and anybody following this thread is more than familiar now with what those opinions are.  I suggest - again - that we drop the subject.

It may be obvious to you but I have to admit I can't see how any vessel is safer in the water than out of it, any more than an aircraft is safer in the air than on the ground.  My own untrained observations and the many remarks made in this thread seem to suggest otherwise.

Apart from the risks of fire, much harder to tackle in a floating ship, wood rots and iron corrodes in the presence of water and the costs of restoring CS and maintaining her afloat would be astronomical.  I believe the undesirable but necessary compromises to make her safe by modern standards have been covered elsewhere.

Let's face it, it's not going to happen.  In that case a discussion of how best to preserve and display her is apropos. 

Michael 

AESTHETICS!!!  Look folks, the poor old Cutty Sark has rotted out, rusted, and then burned down, all while in the hands of the 'conservators' just in the past 50 years.  USS Constitution is still in very good shape, and has been AFLOAT for more than 200 years!  Same is true for the British frigate 'HMS Trincomalee,' 'HMS Warrior,' and the Portuguese frigate 'De Fernando.' Seems to me that it is pretty obvious that the only place for a ship, for EVERY reason, aesthetic and otherwise, is IN THE WATER, and efforts to do otherwise truly only lead to disaster......... History is against it, technology is against it, money is against it, and time is against it, even with the very best intentions... 'Domes and gifte shoppes' indeed!  You might as well stuff your old dog and then wonder why it doesn't play fetch anymore!

That's what I was thinking more or less.  The shadows cast by the massive support structure would also play merry hell with the aesthetics, not to mention photographs, you can see it in the centre photo above but I think the bottom one was taken at dusk - the tower is usually banded by the shadows of the dome structure.  A completely unsupported 'bubble' remains a science-fiction dream for now.

Would a geodetic dome, such as those that house the big radar arrays, only clear of course, do it?

Obviously in this case the structure's maintenance is paid for by the shopping centre revenue but it would take an awful lot of 'gifte shoppes' to similarly house CS. 

Michael

I believe the idea of a glass structure completely enclosing the ship was considered early in the project, and rejected - largely, I imagine, because of the cost.  (In addition to the huge expense of building such a thing in the first place, there would be an enormous annual bill for keeping the interior environmentally right.)  I have to say that, in terms of personal aesthetic taste,  I find it hard to imagine such a structure that I'd find attractive.  (The silhouettes of the structural members would devastate the aesthetics of the ship.)  If the qualified experts on conservation concluded that putting the ship inside a building was the only way to save her, I'd advocate doing it - but unless some architect were to come up with a design that's utterly beyond my imagination (certainly a possibility), I wouldn't like it much.

Getting back to ships by, I admit, a circuitous route, I was wondering if it was feasible to 'house' Cutty Sark completely.  The top of her mainmast is 152' above the deck, which is about 46 metres, and if you allow for the height of the deck above the waterline (assuming it's at ground level) you'd be looking at a height of roughly 50 metres.

By coincidence there is a parallel here in Melbourne, albeit a very stationary shot tower, which is about 50 metres in height.  It was built in 1890 and was, at the time, the tallest structure around.  When the site was earmarked for 'development' in the 80's they were told they must restore and retain the shot tower within their plans because it's a heritage-listed building.  So now, right in the middle of a multi-storey shopping complex is this anachronism.  What they've done is create a massive cone structure over a central plaza incorporating the shot tower.

Now, while it certainly preserves the tower and the lower building for posterity it seems to me to be a very artificial existence;

 

The figures abseiling down the tower give you a sense of scale.  Imagine the Cutty Sark in this position - does it work for you?

Michael 

searat12 wrote:

Oh, and here's another note regarding aircraft.  It was mentioned earlier that some people like to see the planes in museums that are battered and weather-worn, in preference to shiny and perfect... Airplanes REALLY don't like to be beat up, as they have a lot of quite delicate systems aboard that don't take kindly to poor maintenance (even WW1 planes!).  As a result, ground-crews used to spend an inordinate amount of time doing their very best to keep the planes as clean and shiny as possible at all times.  This is especially important with the early wood and canvas planes, as dirt and moisture plays hell with the wing surfaces (in fact, they didn't fly in the rain at all, and were often grounded if the strip was too muddy), and the engines were fickle enough as it was, let alone allowing a bunch of crud to build up.  Also, the lifespan of planes 'at the front' was remarkably short, even if they didn't crash or get shot down.  Partly this was because of the rapid advance of technology rendering planes dangerously obsolete within a year or eighteen months at most (though bombers often remained in frontline service for extended periods).  In WW1, this 'effective' period could be as little as six months!  As a result, the combination of careful maintenance and 'newness' for most planes in actual service meant the craft were in pretty good shape when active (though spells at 'unimproved' airfields in WW2 might reduce this level fairly quickly, as well as periods of rapid turnaround for multiple missions, and with consequent aircraft losses as a result).  In other words, a beat up or grubby plane is an accident waiting to happen, and it wouldn't wait long!  So when you look at a battered aircraft in a museum, it is important to remember that this is not how the plane looked when it was active, but is either how the plane was found, or the best the museum could afford as far as restoration without replacing original parts (which would certainly have been done in service). This is especially true of 'enemy' aircraft on display, as a lot of them were either tested extensively after capture, and then abandoned for long periods before they were conserved, or they were captured in a 'grounded' state specifically BECAUSE they were too rough to fly safely anymore.

I agree in principle with most of the above but the point I made, and which I assume is being referred to here, is that no machine of war, especially in the cauldron of events such as the Battle of Britain, was in showroom condition.  Yes, they were in tip-top mechanical flying order and hats off the ground crews who kept them that way under very trying circumstances, but these machine's lives were measured in weeks (or less) and except perhaps when on 100 hour inspections would not receive any cosmetic care.  They naturally accumulate scrapes and scratches from booted feet on the wingroots, chipped and scratched paint around the Dzus fastenings on the cowlings, gun panels, fuel caps, and especially the leading edges of the wings, exhaust stains, gunsmoke and oil stains, not to mention the possibility of panels replaced from other aircraft with different states of wear.  Thin aluminium alloy dents very easily and if a slight dent in a cowling is unlikely to affect flight characteristics why bother to repair it?

These are the sort of things that bring life to an aircraft and tell its story and these are what's missing from the restored "Warbirds", a term I despise - let's call them "Showbirds".

Look at most 'camouflaged'  restored aircraft flying today, they're nearly all spotlessly finished in gloss!  Why, because it's easier to maintain and clean - but it's not authentic.

Perhaps it's time we got back to ships, before we get told off....

Michael 

Some good youtube stuff for fans of ships at sea... Listen to Alan Villiers, and have a look at what Cutty Sark might have looked like at sea....

Alan Villiers
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ufNzunuXMCc&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vqz56XfW8SI&NR=1

Amistad
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUtPQ7X8G8M&feature=related

Stad Amsterdam Clipper ship
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jn4fT-0lPko&feature=related

Stad Amsterdam underweigh
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfNyxOGrF0Q&feature=related

Coulda been Cutty Sark, but it ain't, it's Stad Amsterdam!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMJc6mWoZog&feature=related

Oh, and here's another note regarding aircraft.  It was mentioned earlier that some people like to see the planes in museums that are battered and weather-worn, in preference to shiny and perfect... Airplanes REALLY don't like to be beat up, as they have a lot of quite delicate systems aboard that don't take kindly to poor maintenance (even WW1 planes!).  As a result, ground-crews used to spend an inordinate amount of time doing their very best to keep the planes as clean and shiny as possible at all times.  This is especially important with the early wood and canvas planes, as dirt and moisture plays hell with the wing surfaces (in fact, they didn't fly in the rain at all, and were often grounded if the strip was too muddy), and the engines were fickle enough as it was, let alone allowing a bunch of crud to build up.  Also, the lifespan of planes 'at the front' was remarkably short, even if they didn't crash or get shot down.  Partly this was because of the rapid advance of technology rendering planes dangerously obsolete within a year or eighteen months at most (though bombers often remained in frontline service for extended periods).  In WW1, this 'effective' period could be as little as six months!  As a result, the combination of careful maintenance and 'newness' for most planes in actual service meant the craft were in pretty good shape when active (though spells at 'unimproved' airfields in WW2 might reduce this level fairly quickly, as well as periods of rapid turnaround for multiple missions, and with consequent aircraft losses as a result). 

In other words, a beat up or grubby plane is an accident waiting to happen, and it wouldn't wait long!  So when you look at a battered aircraft in a museum, it is important to remember that this is not how the plane looked when it was active, but is either how the plane was found, or the best the museum could afford as far as restoration without replacing original parts (which would certainly have been done in service). This is especially true of 'enemy' aircraft on display, as a lot of them were either tested extensively after capture, and then abandoned for long periods before they were conserved, or they were captured in a 'grounded' state specifically BECAUSE they were too rough to fly safely anymore.

Maybe they should move Cutty Sark to the 'Millenium Dome'!  Or perhaps they should just saw it in half lengthwise, to provide a 'cutaway' view with animatronic 'actors' to play the crew at work, Disney-fashion....(God save us all from marketeers!).  As I said before, there just isn't enough money available to do the jobs right!   I think probably the finest museum of ships and small craft is Mystic Seaport.  The larger craft are all in the water, the small craft are in sheds (most of them without or with truncated masts, but that keeps the roof low so as to make it easier to control the humidity, temperature, etc), and they have a working shipyard as well to do any repairs that are needed, as well as a working blacksmith, chandler, ropewalk, etc, etc, to complete the 'whole picture.'  Really quite remarkable, and it all works together.........

The Cutty Sark's website has some artist's renderings of the new "dome" arrangement.  The glass isn't going to enclose the whole ship.  (There were rumors to that effect early on - and they had me a little worried.)  The "dome" is going to seal the space between the hull and the sides of the drydock.  The ship will be lifted several feet above her current level; visitors will be able to walk directly underneath her.  Some sort of elevator arrangement is going to be installed to carry people from the drydock to the maindeck level.  I don't understand quite how that's going to work, but apparently it's the new solution to the problem of (a) providing access, (b) doing away with the big door that used to be in the port side of the ship, and (c) avoiding a big stairway or ramp that would bring people on board over the rail - and devastate the ship's sheerline. 

To be honest, I'm not sure I'm going to like the appearance of all this any better than I liked the way she used to look.  (I always found the old arrangement, with the waterline level with the pier, quite aesthetically pleasing - and I was willing to accept the logic that resulted in the big door and the maintaining of the portholes in the sides for ventilation.)  But in terms of conserving the hull over the long term the new arrangement has been pronounced by the experts to be a sound design - and that's what's most important.

I'm only aware of one good-sized historic ship that's preserved, more-or-less intact, indoors:  the Wasa.  The Wasa Museum (which I haven't had the good fortune to visit) apparently is an enormous building, with the ship exhibited in such a way that visitors can get a good view of her from some distance and look down from a balcony onto her upper deck.  She only has her lower masts, though.  One big practical problem involved in enclosing a ship with intact masts in an environmentally stable building is that it commits the institution, long-term,  to paying a staggering heating and air conditioning bill to heat and cool all the space around those masts.  (I can't begin to imagine how much it would cost to heat a big open space big enough to enclose the entire spar plan of the Wasa through a Swedish winter.) That's a big reason why so few ships and boats are exhibited indoors with their masts set up.

The joint where I used to work tried to solve the problem with a "small craft building," a cheap structure that amounted essentially to an enormous, sheet-metal shed, which was big enough to hold about a hundred boats of various sorts and tall enough to allow their masts to be raised.  The basic idea probably was sound, but the museum never had enough money to do it right.  The building was always officially regarded as temporary, but when I was working there, in the early eighties, it had been there for at least twenty years - and as far as I know it's still there.  The task of sealing out untreated air (and birds, in considerable numbers) and maintaining consistent temperature and humidity readings was simply beyond the institution's capacity.  Every few weeks the curator of small craft could be heard complaining about some new disaster inside that building - either a bird had crapped on the Venetian gondola, or the summer humidity was making some delicate woodwork fall apart, or it was raining inside.  (That actually happened a couple of times.)  She repeatedly argued that the boats would be better off sitting out in the open (on the ground - not in the water).  The Powers that Be kept assuring her that the problem was temporary; that a series of new "pavilions" was going to be built along the shore of the adjacent lake where all the boats would be exhibited properly.  In the 25 years since I left, one of those facilities, the "Chesapeake Bay Gallery," has in fact been built; four or five of the boats from the shed have been moved into it.  So far as I know, the others are still sitting in the old "Small Craft Building."  That's one of my big criticisms of the administrations that have run that museum for the past 25 years.  But there's been a change of administrations recently.  Maybe things will get better soon....

There is much I would like to say about the flying of irreplaceable historic aircraft but I tend to get overly emotional and then to rant.  The story of Black 6, the Messerschmidt Bf109 that was restored to fly in the nineties, is at least one with a 'happy' ending.  After a very short flying career this invaluable example pranged after an engine failure.  Fortunately it was not destroyed and the pilot was unhurt.  Then came the inevitable cries, "Black 6 must fly again".  Fortunately the MoD, who own the 'plane disagreed and after further restoration it is permanently grounded - available for future generations to examine at close quarters and to be suitably impressed.  Of course the MoD may have also been influenced by budgetary concerns and been glad of an excuse, I don't know.

At least we won't see her on a five-second clip the evening news ploughing into the ground in a ball of fire. 

There is a sort of parallel in motor cars, also German as it turns out.  Just before WWII Mercedes Benz created the T80, designed to wrest the land speed record for Nazi Germany and projected to reach 750kph (a speed still not exceeded by conventional engine-driven wheeled vehicles).  it was abandoned at the start of the war but still exists, engineless, in the MB museum.

It was meant to be powered by a 44.5l Daimler-Benz DB603 and such an engine still exists.  Predictably, there are those who say "put the (rare and unique) DB603 in the (even more rare and unique) T80 and let's see if it could have achieved its promise!"

Thank the gods MB are not that stupid.

Speaking of housing historic ships, I can't see that it would be particularly difficult to build a dome over Cutty Sark, but would it be aesthetically satisfactory?  To my mind enclosing the ship would take away more than it would add - imagine not being able to photograph those masts and rigging against the sky - just a thought.

Michael 

....and I can certainly agree with that Prof Tilley!

I'd like, if I may, to meditate a little more on MJH's comments.  He was talking specifically about historic aircraft, but much of what he says is equally applicable to other categories of artifact.

Aircraft preservation - for better or worse - has developed in the past few decades sort of independently from other branches of the field.  Quite apart from the "warbird" approach to flying the old machines (a practice worthy of discussion in its own right), airplanes in museums often tend to be treated differently than other artifacts.  Maybe it's partly because so many airplane restorers are former (or current) pilots, but there does seem to be an instinctive desire to "spiff up" the old machines as much as possible.  In the past few years some conservators and curators have started wondering whether that's really the only legitimate approach - for many of the reasons implied in MJH's post.

I confess I've got mixed emotions about the subject.  The first time I saw a beautifully restored, shiny, perfect-looking SPAD, at the Air Force Museum in Dayton, when I was in high school, was quite a revelation.  For one thing, I could scarcely believe how small the thing was.  (Somehow none of the models I'd built had managed to convey that.)  And I'd always tended to think of WWI airplanes as crude, primitive, somehow sort of sloppy contraptions.  The carefully carved and varnished struts, the intricate stitchery of the fabric, and the straightforward but expert workmanship of the metal work did away with that misconception for once and for all. 

But did that airplane actually look like that when it was in service?  I doubt it.  Does it really convey, as well as it's capable of doing, a sense of what air warfare in WWI was like?  I doubt it.  Maybe, in their meticulous workmanship and their reverence for the artifact (and "reverence" is the word for the attitude lots of those guys take - quite properly, in my opinion), the restorers unconsciously did away with some of that elusive thing called "character." 

Aviation museums routinely do some things that other museums frown upon.  For a long time it's been considered ordinary, for instance, to paint old airplanes in color schemes they never wore in their service careers.  (Every P-51 had to be painted in the markings of some famous ace.  And for a long time it was hard to find a restored P-40 that didn't have a "shark mouth" on its nose - regardless of how it had ever been painted before.)  The best museums are moving away from that approach nowadays.  They're also recognizing that imperfections, and even damage, can be important parts of the artifacts' history.  (When the Smithsonian restored its Albatros D-V, the conservators found the bullet in the engine that, they think, had brought the plane down.  They could have repaired the damage.  They didn't.  Bravo.) 

One of my favorite exhibits at Dayton now is centered around a WWII trainer.  (I haven't been there in several years; I don't remember exactly which aircraft it is.)  It's exhibited (at least I assume this is still the case) standing on its nose, on a (reproduction) twisted-up prop - obviously the victim of a messed up landing by a student.  The student himself, in the form of a mannequin dressed in meticulously authentic reproduction WWII flying gear, is standing alongside, trying desperately to explain what happened to an obviously furious instructor.  A few feet away, a mechanic with a rueful look on his face is contemplating the job of replacing the prop.  I hate to think how much those mannequins must have cost, but to my eye - and to the eyes of quite a few other visitors who happened by while I was there - the effect was worth the money.  (The typical reaction of visitors when they came around the corner and saw the exhibit was to start laughing.  How refreshing to hear laughter in a museum!) 

Conservation - of ships, airplanes, and all other types of artifacts - is a complicated subject.  In deciding how to deal with a particular artifact's problems, the good conservator and curator take all sorts of things into consideration, and recognize that no one approach is necessarily the "right" one in all circumstances.  But they also regard certain basic points as crucial:  their responsibility to the artifact and the generations of people who will be coming to see it.  One highly desirable (though sometimes unattainable) attribute of any modern conservation technique is "reversibility" - the ability to undo whatever the conservator does to the artifact and bring it back to the state in which he or she found it.  Reversibility allows for the possibility that some later conservator may figure out a better way to handle the problem.

There are plenty of "right" ways to restore and conserve precious old airplanes.  But please - don't fly them.

I spent the last year of my Navy enlistment on the USS Lexington. She was a "living ship" in that she had a full crew and regular upkeep and proper(?) maintenance. But that ship was a creaking, leaking, squeaking tub beyond all the tweaking that could be done to help her. That was in 1976. The Navy kept her patched up for another 15 years until decommissioning her in 1991. How they kept that boat going still amazes me. One way, I suppose, was to limit her to operations to the Gulf of Mexico where the seas are very calm and to relegate her operations to pilot training. I was so happy that the Navy decided to allow her to become a museum instead of scrapping her or turning her into an artifiical reef ala Oriskany or the America. My kids, grandchildren and theirs, for that matter, will be able to visit her and stand on the same bridge I stood watch on (and where Admiral Mitscher gave the order to "Turn on the lights" during the battle of the Phillippine Sea) long after I'm gone and wonder on it. Make them all into museums for all I care, just keep them when ever it's possible.

Gentlemen,

Let's dial back the heat here. Obviously there is a core disagreement about the philosophy of preservation as it relates to ships and other machines. How about we agree to disagree and leave the rhetoric out.

On a personal note, I've always been tempted by Revell's Sark. One of these days ...

Apparently you didn't read my last post closely.  A ship is NOT an airplane!  An airplane can be carefully stowed inside a museum, and climate controlled, and you can't do the same with a ship!  Cutty Sark has had, and is going to have so much replaced on her, or bastardized for the sake of commercialism that it really will have very little to do with the old ship!  In other words, it is just a collection of old wood and iron, with very little context.  If you want to see what a ship really looks like, feels like, and how they were built and operated, you will NEVER get that from a static display, no matter how 'original' it may claim to be!  Take a charter on a Tall Ship, be a part of its crew AT SEA for a few days, and you will learn far more than any book, or display will EVER teach you!  And that's a guarantee.....  I think you have missed the point I have been trying to make, and that is, we ARE destroying many of these ships to satisfy our selfish desires, by putting them in a static museum, we are loving them to death!  Cutty Sark now IS a 'pile of scrap' that used to be a beautiful clipper ship, and you and your children will NEVER see, or hear, or feel what it USED to be like (unless a replica is built and sailed).

It is important to understand that a ship's useful life is measured in decades, even centuries, whereas an airplanes useful life, or even it's level of technology is hopelessly obsolete within just a few years.  A WW2 fighter could only be expected to be usefull for a couple years at best, even if it didn't get shot down or crashed.  Thus, the airplane survivors that still exist really ARE 'ephemera,' and the social and other structures that go along with them, that put them in context are even more fleeting.  To put ships in the same perspective as an old WW2 airplane, think if your visiting experience was not just seeing the plane fly ("you should have seen it..."), but included the whole aircrew, not 'pretending' to be a WW2 aircrew, but in fact ARE a WW2 aircrew, with all the rank structure, the mess hall, promotions, camaraderie, etc, etc, etc.  And YOU can actually be a part of all that, not JUST an observer or reader of labels (though that is possible too, if you wish).  That is what you get with a Tall Ship in active commission!  Why?  Because with a traditional Tall Ship there really is only one way to do things, the same way it has always been done, and for the same reasons.  Can you understand the difference of experience?

As far as patterns, etc, there are excellent plans available for the construction of just about every Tall Ship, many of them the original builders plans, others been created after the fact to ensure the information is not lost.  And these are available regardless of whether the actual ship is still in existence, for use in the future should someone wish to build a sistership.

 Yes, Vasa has provided a wealth of detail about period ship-building practices, but far more important from a historical and anthropoligical view were all the personal items found aboard, the context they were found in, all of which revealed enormous amounts of information as to the social structure inherent in life aboard a ship of this period (its sudden loss created a snapshot of social and cultural history).  But you know, the information about how the ship was built really didn't take that long to figure out.  It is all the rest of the stuff aboard that has kept researchers busy ever since.  One quick aside, although they know how Vasa was constructed, actually constructing a ship by these methods has turned out to be MUCH more difficult than anyone imagined!  The great Dutch Flagship 'Zeven Provincien' was built in the same manner as Vasa, and the people in the Netherlands have been trying to build a replica in the same manner.  Halfway through the construction of the lower hull they discovered they weren't able to do it, and have had to start over, this time using English style construction which is completely different.  Why?  Because the actual techniques used in the old Dutch ship-building method have quite simply been lost to time, and while we know the theory, and we even have diagrams of how to do it, the practical experience to do so has been lost, despite the best historical research by the best people.......

 Finally, I am not suggesting that ANY old or historic ship should be simply destroyed, as that WOULD be a tragedy.  All I am suggesting is that the old ships either be brought up to commission status, of if that is not possible, to build a replica and USE it, not only to understand what that ship was really all about, but to ALSO create a revenue stream to preserve as much as possible of the original.  To do otherwise simply guarantees the eventual loss of the original, and all of its social and historical meaning (I'd rather see a real indian, being an indian, in the indian nations, than to look at a collection of arrowheads in a museum!)

Well said, MJH.  And by the way - the Wasa isn't in the best of health, but she's not "dying."  I'm not thoroughly knowledgeable about the subject, but as I understand it her custodians have discovered some serious problems with the polyethelene glycol treatment she got back in the fifties and sixties.  (She was one of the first artifacts to get that treatment; it was to some extent an experimental one.)  Some of the best, most qualified brains in the worldwide field of conservation are working on the problem; I'm confident that there is a solution, and that these people will find it.  And in this particular case, funding, for once, should not be a problem.  I'm reliably informed that she's the biggest tourist attraction in Sweden.  The government knows it can't afford to let her fall apart.

I cannot go along with searat's assessment of this subject.  No matter how big, how complex or how much 'life' we emotional beings might ascribe to a ship, aircraft, steam engine or whatever, they are merely artefacts - tools -  no more important in that sense than grandfather's axe.  What they achieved, or rather, what was achieved using them is far more important than the devices themselves.

At the same time it is far more important to posterity to see at close hand what they looked like, felt like and how they were built than what emotions were stirred by seeing them in motion (or hearing them fly overhead, or whatever...) and future generations will hardly thank us for our selfishness in destroying them to satisfy our desires;  "Look kids, this pile of scrap used to be a beautiful flying machine - you should have seen and heard it as it climbed and looped and dived through the sky...I did, but you never will". 

At least if it's preserved it's available to provide patterns to produce a replica, when it's gone it's gone for good.  I know that the first time I got close to a WWII aeroplane in a museum it had a much greater impact on me than seeing another example that had been restored to fly; the first showed all the wear, tear and minor dings and scrapes accumulated in a life of service (or even from manufacture), the other was artificially 'perfect' and who knows what compromises had been made to comply with modern regulation.

I must admit the first machine left me with a much greater understanding and respect for those who took these machines to war and trusted their lives to them.  I think the same applies to ships whether built for war or peace.  And if the 'gifte shoppe' helps CS to pay its way in this commercial world then it's a necessary evil.

As to Wasa I daresay she has added a great deal more to our knowledge of how such ships were constructed since her raising than she ever would have half buried in mud 100ft under the ocean. 

Michael 

Yup, I agree with just about everything that has been said, and Prof Tilley and I really have just one discrepancy between us, and that is that I HATE to think of a ship, ANY ship, as an 'artifact,' since it generally and simply by the nature of its treatment (in the hands of conservators and curators) becomes an 'artifiction!'  The 'professional' conservators with all their academic training simply DO NOT HAVE the actual 'hands on' training or lore learned by centuries of experience handed down by generations necessary to deal with the 'preservation' of a ship.  Any ship!  Yes, they can 'save' or 'conserve' a small piece of wood, or even a fairly large piece of wood, maybe even a piece of rope.  But that is not a ship.   

A ship is simply too large, too complex a living organism to ever maintain 'as original' for any amount of time, even if they had the money and resources to try (and Cutty Sark had been converted to all intensive purposes to a coffee bar and gifte shoppe before she burned).  The latest 'conservation' iteration sounds more like the 'Millenium Dome' to me!  I note that they plan to replace the keel, the main deck, all of the sheathing, replace all of the shores and props with 'a new system' to ensure the hull doesn't lose it's shape (which apparently it had because of bad blocking, just as I said in my previous posts!), install elevators, and even an auditorium on the main deck fer gawd's sake!  They will have to replace a fair bit of the ironwork too, as so much had corroded before the fire (which in this instance, may be something of a blessing, since now they can get at the ironwork properly).  And yet, they still claim that the ship will be '90-95% original from her seagoing days.'  Sounds more like the story of my great great grandfathers axe.... All I have to say is a good ol' Yankee expletive.... Pshaw!!

This is why the Vasa is dying, this is why Cutty Sark is dying (if not actually dead), and the same can be said for just about EVERY ship that is part of a museum, rather than in use, it is all just a matter of time, and of course, how many 'conservators' manage to get their hands on it......

Prof Tilley, your posts are like reading an issue of Naval History.. rarely I read one of your posts without writing some note or tidbit down... thanks for taking the time for your detailed and well constructed posts.

PS I am not "taking sides" on the debate, just enjoying the plethora of information and stories about naval conservation. Cheers all!

Searat 12, I agree completely with your last post - and the example you mentioned regarding the spritsail vs. the jib is precisely the sort of thing I was talking about in my earlier comment regarding the research value of replica ships.  (It's worth noting that Alan Villiers was among those who dismissed the spritsail as a piece of silliness - until he got some actual experience with one.) 

In your next-to-last post, you seem to have read something into my last one that wasn't there.  My point was simply that the standards and ethics of the artifact conservation field are, quite properly, determined by professional conservators with intensive academic training in the related sciences (organic chemistry, physics, microbiology, etc.) - training that neither you nor I possess in sufficient degree to make us qualified commentators on the technical fine points of conservation. 

We have now found a good deal of common ground, along with some areas in which it's clear that we aren't going to agree.  I suggest this would be a good time to drop the matter.

...A final note on reproductions.... I agree with Prof Tilley on just about every point, which is why I am so supportive of reporduction ships (and Cutty Sark would be an excellent subject for just this reason!).  Yes, reproductions cost a LOT of money to build, but strangely, they generally cost a lot less than rebuilding or restoring an old ship that is in really bad shape!  This is NOT a good reason to destroy old ships, or to allow them to continue to die, but it is a good reason to consider allocation of resources.  On this point, the best reproductions work for just one reason; they make money!  A ship needs to earn her keep, and whether this is through sail-training programs, charters, or what have you, there is no free lunch!  And this is yet another difference between a museum ship, and a ship in use. 

Museums are for the most part 'non-profit' organizations, which depend upon 'the kindness of strangers' to keep going in the form of donations, grants, etc.  A very tough row to hoe!  While this is usually enough to keep bricks and mortar together, the same is not true for a ship.  Yet a ship in use can be used to generate interest and funding from far-flung sources, bringing in people from all over the world, which is otherwise a challenge for even the best museums.  A few years ago, 'Mayflower' put to sea again, for the first time in decades.  Among her ports of call was Providence, Rhode Island.  When that ship sailed up Narragansett Bay, I can tell you that the ENTIRE BAY was filled with every kind of boat you could imagine, all straining to get a glimpse of the Mayflower (in fact, it was a navigational nightmare, which would have been worse if she had arrived according to schedule!).  This one trip gained more media coverage, more donations and funding for the Plymouth Plantation museum than had been garnered in more than ten years of sitting quietly at the dock.... and in turn, paid for some very important repairs not only to the ship, but to museum infrastructure as well!

Same thing happened for 'Batavia,' when she was shipped to Australia for the Olympics.  Because of historical accuracy, she was (and is) unable to sail in European waters for insurance purposes, and so was placed IN a transport ship to Australia, where she sailed up and down quite happily to the cheers of all.  Money and interest gained from this excusion has in a large part funded the construction of 'Zeven Provincien,' which is still ongoing.....

In other words, figure out how to make it pay, and a ship, even an old one, can be a positive benefit to a museum, rather than 'a hole in the water into which one pours money!'

Well, as Ronald Reagan used to say, 'there you go again!'  First off, you don't know who I am, or WHAT I know, that is just an assumption on your part, the same sort of assumption that gets curators and conservators in trouble!  I happen to be a yacht broker, that specializes in classic ships of all kinds, and have been to more marine surveys than you can shake a stick at!  Truly, I have seen yachts and ships of all kinds, and all ages and what happens to them over the years, what can be done to repair them, assessing damages, costs and values.  You can have a look at some of the ships I represent at www.yachtworld.com/aib

I have been at this for a number of years, and have myself been a sailor for about thirty five years.  And by sailor, I mean gaff-rigged craft, schooners, ketches, cutters, catboats, Friendship Sloops, you name it!  I have been a member of The Old Gaffers Association since 1995, and have assisted in the restoration of a couple Essex Smacks, and a Falmouth Oyster Boat of my own, sailing and racing in the many 'gaffer' events in the North Sea, the Western Isles of Scotland and in the Netherlands too.  And one thing I have learned after all this, is that conservators, curators, and many other arm-chair experts seem to ask questions of everyone EXCEPT the people that might actually know something on the subject, and that is the folks on the waterfront, the ones who actually own and operate wooden ships, and have been working with them for years (the most notable exception is the Navy folks who had the hogging of USS Constitution repaired with the help of some schooner-builders from Maine and Essex Massachusetts).  The point is that most of the knowledge and information about preserving a wooden ship IS around, and has been for centuries, but for the most part, conservators and curators don't seem to be able to ask the right questions of the right people (mostly they just talk among themselves).

One of the reasons Mystic Seaport is so outstanding, and the preservation of their vessels is at such a high level is that it also contains a WORKING SHIPYARD, which actually BUILDS ships ('Amistad' is one of their products), rather than just a collection of labelled ship-building tools with no real idea how any of this stuff works, or how ships go together (and come apart!), and this brings me to a final point.

While a ship in use is in and of itself a good thing that ensures the survival of that vessel, equally, perhaps even MORE important is how the USE of that ship preserves the skills required to operate and maintain it properly.  You can have the very finest display of an old ship, but if there is no-one who knows and understands how it all works, you have lost more than half the science and story of that ship, along with all the social structure, traditions and interactions of her crew with the vessel itself.  One of the best examples of this involves the 'Mayflower,' which was sailed over from the UK to Plymouth by Alan Villiers, now these many years ago.  Villiers had crewed and captained some of the greatest Tall Ships of the age, around Cape Horn and damn near everywhere else.  But he had never sailed an old-fashioned square-rigger like Mayflower, and particularly never a ship that had a spritsail, but no jibs, nor had anyone else still living. 

Until that voyage, it was common 'expert knowledge' that a square rigger with no jibs would have a very hard time sailing to windward, and were mostly considered to be very much 'by the wind sailers.'  What Villiers and the others found out was a very different story indeed.  The spritsail (that small square sail slung below the bowsprit) was not designed to be set 'square' like everyone had previously thought (i.e. parallel with the waterline and only used when the wind was aft), but instead is designed to be twisted at a considerable angle, almost perpendicular to the waterline.  When used in this fashion, the spritsail functions almost exactly like a jib, but since it is quite close to the water, it does not in any way bear heavily on the ship (does not make the ship heel over).  It is in fact a very powerful sail, that allows even an old-fashioned high-pooped ship like Mayflower to sail very well to weather, thank you very much, yet was easy to control, and is the explanation for why such a sail survived for more than a hundred years AFTER the introduction of the jib with all its supposed benefits (even USS Constitution is equipped to carry one!).  Yet this was never discovered or accounted for by conservators, curators, or historians, but by sailors, USING a ship that was equipped with one for the first time in a couple hundred years!  And this is just ONE assumption by 'experts' that had stood for years, but was stood on its head by actual, practical usage.

It would be a wonderful thing if old ships could be effectively and perfectly preserved by museums, and certainly many museums have done as much as they can, but in the end, it is a losing game, and nothing lasts forever......'Nuff said?

Styrenegyrene, you've neatly summed up several of the fundamental quandaries of artifact conservation.

In my last post, when I was describing the "constituencies" to whom conservators need to feel responsible, I left out one of the most important.  The conservator has a huge responsibility to the next generation of the public.  A major justification for expending time, effort, and money on artifact preservation is that our grandchildren, and their grandchildren, ought to be able to see and appreciate those artifacts.  (There's a rather large literature on the emotional and scholarly value of artifacts, their value as research tools, and the "connections" they let people make with the past.)  Whenever I look at an old airplane preserved in a museum, I remind myself that if the museum does its job right, that airplane will tell its story to many generations.  I certainly wouldn't want to be in the shoes of the guy who'd have to tell my great-great-great grandson, "well, there used to be such a thing as a B-24, and as recently as 2008 quite a few of them still existed.  But they all got wrecked in crashes and collisions at airshows.  Cheer up; your great-great-great grandfather got to watch them fly." 

A few years ago I happened to be in Phoenix, Arizona for a conference.  I'd read that one of the attractions of Phoenix was a "fighter museum" on the outskirts of town.  I spent over an hour - in the July heat, in my little old non-air-conditioned Dodge 024 - driving to the place.  When I discovered that almost all the WWI fighters in its collection were replicas built in the sixties and seventies, I practically demanded my money back.  Nowadays I have a different attitude toward replicas.  I see a real value in building such things as a means of giving enthusiasts and the public a generous taste, at least, of what the real planes looked and sounded like in their intended element.  Go ahead and build, as accurately as is practical, a full-size reproduction of a Fokker D-VII, and fly it at every airshow you can find.  Use it in mock dogfights with somebody else's SPAD replica.  Make movies of it.  Use it in every possible way to demonstrate what such machines looked like in the air - and what sort of people it took to fly them.  But leave the real Fokker D-VII in the Smithsonian - and make sure everybody understands the difference.

The same goes for ships.  In the past thirty years or so the quality of full-size replica vessels has improved enormously.  (The Elizabeth II, the new Jamestown ships, the Batavia, and the Endeavour come to mind immediately; there are quite a few others.)  Let them give the public a good taste of what a sailing vessel looks like in its element.  But subjecting real, centuries-old ships to the dangers of sea and weather (and, for that matter, vandals and drunken yachtsmen), with the intention of saying, "hey, it's too bad but these things happen" when one of them gets damaged or sunk, would, in the eyes of the preservation profession, simply not be acceptable.   

The big problem with the building of such replicas is that they cost enormous amounts of money - and there's only so much of it around.  Searat slightly exaggerated the seriousness of the manpower problem afflicting historic ships (Mystic Seaport, the Mary Rose, and the Constitution come to mind as examples of organizations that are handling that problem reasonably successfully), but it's certainly true that the vast majority of historic ship restoration projects don't have enough funding and rely too heavily for their own good on inadequately trained volunteer labor.  [Later edit:  I need to add a big qualifier here.  Some of the finest, most conscientious, and most eminently qualified people I've ever met in museums and restoration projects have been volunteers.  They are, in many cases, the backbone of the cultural resources management field - on land and in the air, as well as in the maritime preservation world.]  The people in charge of such projects gnash their teeth when they see great chunks of money getting spent on the construction of a replica.  (I suspect a lot of ship preservationists practically tore their hair out when they saw that the Hollywood movie makers were pouring money by the hundreds of thousands of dollars into the old H.M.S. Rose replica, which as a replica was pretty awful but did a great service in providing the set for "Master and Commander.") 

It is to be hoped that somehow or other, sometime in the not-too-distant future, some sort of financial and ethical equilibrium will be reached in which competently-administered ship preservation projects can co-exist with the building and operation of reasonably accurate replicas, without driving anybody into bankruptcy.  I'm not at all sure it will happen in my lifetime, but I do see some cause for optimism.  The standards being achieved today on a fairly regular basis in both the preservation of ships and the building of replicas are far higher than they were a few decades ago.

Searat and Prof. both make terrific points.  Though I've been interested in ships for many years, I've never been as passionate about them as I have about WWII aircraft.  What a conundrum!  They were made to fly - the are creatures of the sky - but flying destroys them.  When I saw the video of Constitution under way a few years ago, my heart jumped out of my chest.  I can't fault a syllable of what Prof. Tilley says, but neither can I deny the thrill I felt that day.  I almost cry every time I read of a warbird being destroyed, but then I have also brushed tears from my eyes at the sight and sound of one in its element.  Robert E. Lee once said that to be a great commander, one must love the army, and must be willing to risk the destruction of that which he loves.  Even so, eh?

About 20 years ago, I discovered the grave of a Confederate soldier in a little village cemetery at Cubero, NM.  He'd died there of pnuemonia in April of '62.  His grave was marked by a sandstone headstone with his name, rank, unit, and date of death engraved by hand - that is, freehand.  Out of respect and awe, I went over there every few months for the next five years and removed the weeds from the grave.  Then one day I noticed something - the wind-driven sand, no longer blocked by the weeds, had eroded the stone almost to an unreadable state.

Fortunately for the world, the fate of the old ships is not up to me, because sure as shootin', I'd screw it up!  I surely do admire the passion and scholarship evident herein. 

There's no point in continuing this argument much further.  I do, however, feel obliged to defend the position of the conservators to this extent.  Professional conservators (and curators; there's a huge difference) most emphatically do take advice - from people who know more about the subject in question than either searat or I do.  The subject of conservation of materials removed from (or kept in) an underwater environment is a complex one, involving science that neither of us is competent to discuss. The positions taken by the profession are constantly changing on the basis of evidence, experience, and experimentation.  Theories about which chemicals and procedures are most effective at preserving wood under particular circumstances are constantly being debated and revised.  Individual circumstances, such as water temperature, depth, and salinity, certainly play significant roles (though I don't think any trained conservator would seriously suggest that the preservative characteristics of immersion in salt water compensate for the damaging ones). 

No conservator worth his/her salt suggests he/she knows all the answers - or that the solutions currently regarded as the best ones will be regarded that way twenty years from now.  What they do agree on, though (assuming that they're competent and properly trained - as the ones working on the Cutty Sark so obviously are), is that (1) their second-most important responsibility is to the current, up-to-date theories and ethics of their profession; and (2) their most important responsibility of all is to the artifacts of which they are the temporary custodians - in this case, the ships. 

Well, one thing is true, the curators are going to do what they are going to do, and are not likely to take any advice.  You might also note that 'Vasa's' current problems relate to the fact that she was taken OUT of SALT water (not fresh), where she had been sitting quietly on the bottom for over 300 years.  SALT water has many preservative qualities, while FRESH water promotes the growth of mold, fungus, dry and wet rot (in fact, it is a very old technique when taking an old wooden boat out of the salt water for an extended period of time to literally fill the bilges with salt, to prevent the evil effects of fresh water from rain, but God help you if the hull is bronze-fastened!).  A number of Viking ships have also been found on the bottom of the Danish Fjiord of Roskilde, and are also in quite good shape (and were in salt water for a thousand years).  Hogging, when not caused by excessive weights in the ends (as in  USS Constitution), is more often caused by a boat being OUT of the water, not in the water (i.e. badly blocked in a boatyard for an extended period), and simply being unused.  Sometimes hogging can be caused by structural faults, usually the result of misplaced enthusiasm in moving bulkheads, combined with the squeezing that can be exerted by the shrouds, and or unequalized presure of stays and other rigging, which WILL happen, if the riggining is not checked fairly regularly, and this is especially true if the standing rigging is manilla, or some other natural rope fiber which stretches and contracts dramatically with rain and sun (and this checking just doesn't happen at a museum).  In other words, hogging is not really a 'natural aging process for a wood hull,' but IS a very un-natural process brought about by simple neglect.  The 'Charles W. Morgan' in Mystic Seaport is afloat at present.  When I was a kid back in the '60's, the Morgan was essentially hard aground on land, with everything inside below the waterline essentially filled with gravel and the tide literally running in and out.  There was a lot of rot setting into the upper part of the hull, but she still looked wonderful to me as a boy.....  A major effort was launched to get her out of her hard berth, and when they removed all the shingle from her hold, it turned out that the planking that had been completely underwater all that time was in quite good condition, while the planking above the waterline essentially all needed to be replaced!

As for 'America,' her troubles didn't start until she had been through several modifications for both war, and 'yachtie' purposes and then ended in the hands of the Naval Academy at Annapolis.  They didn't want her, didn't maintain her, left her tied up to the same dock for years on end, charging a pittance for the few that were interested to go aboard for a lark.  After decades of this, they hauled the poor old schooner ashore, put her in a shed with some half-assed ideas of a possible restoration after the war, and guess what?  A big snow storm collapsed the roof of the shed, completely crushing 'America' like matchwood.  So much for 'safety and preservation ashore!'  They'd have been better off if they had just sunk her in the Bay (as had been done to her for a while during the Civil War).

As for Cutty Sark, her wood (other than that burned by the fire) is indeed quite good, simply because it is teakwood.  Teakwood is almost impervious to rot, particularly in salt water.  But there is an inherent problem here that was under quite a bit of discussion back when I lived in the UK during the '90's.  Turns out, the iron framing of the hull was having electrolysis problems from the wood.  Electrolysis does not just happen between metals, but can also happen from certain kinds of wood on certain kinds of metals (like teak on iron, for instance), as well as between different kinds of wood alone!  So when you look at it from just about any angle, the actual construction of Cutty Sark was bound to destroy her in the end.  'That's what they calls ironic!'

Regarding the "lily pad decks" - the phrase on the ship's website is:  "...Removing the 1950s misleading false deck [i.e., the layer of planking that was laid on top of the original deck at that time], replacing it with more sympathetic 'lily pad' decks with a collapsible auditorium which can accommodate audiences for concerts, performances and seminars and thus create new audiences for Cutty Sark."  I confess I have trouble visualizing just what all that means, but it may well be something along the lines of what ddp59 suggested. 

Regarding searat's comments - there's not much point in getting into an argument here.  One thing we can be sure of is that the people responsible for the ship's restoration are not going to consult either searat or me about it.  I do think it would be difficult to find anyone directly involved in historic ship preservation who'd agree that "water is the VERY BEST support for a ship."  There are too many examples to prove that simply isn't true - for big ships, small boats, and anything between.  Hogging is a natural part of the aging process in a wood hull; it's exacerbated in warships because of their heavy guns, but it happens to any wood hull that isn't supported by some sort of rigid structure designed for the purpose.  (Photos and drawings of the yacht America at various points in her career, for instance, establish that her sheer drooped quite noticeably as she got older.)  The Cutty Sark escaped hogging almost entirely, because she has an iron frame.  (As a matter of fact, it occurs to me that she just may have escaped it completely.  The measurements taken after she went into drydock - in the fifties or early sixties, I think - established that the keel was very, very slightly lower at both ends than amidships.  Did they know for absolute certain that the keel was absolutely straight in 1870?  I rather doubt it.)

Searat does make an extremely valid point about the manpower required to maintain an historic ship.  Well-meaning organizations that take on ship or boat preservation projects frequently have no conception of that problem.  (They generally find out in a hurry.  The people in charge of the U.S.S. North Carolina, for instance, are supremely aware that their fine, hard-working "crew" of a few dozen is trying to do the work that, during the ship's active service, was done by several thousand people.)  That's one of the biggest reasons why so many ship preservation (and, for that matter, replication) projects fail.  (The place where I used to work refused to get involved in that field.  Once in a while we'd get a phone call from some earnest person who thought we should take on the preservation of a ship - usually either the heavy cruiser Newport News or the liner United States.  I got some practice at explaining that the museum's charter and mission statement wouldn't let us do that.  The truth is that the mission statement could have been changed, but we made the conscious decision to leave ship preservation to the people and facilities - e.g., Mystic Seaport - that had the experience, equipment, and funding souces to do it right.)

It's also certainly true that most historic wood ships have had much, if not most, of their fabric replaced during their careers.  (The hull planking of the Charles W. Morgan has been replaced at least four times during the forty years or so that I've been visiting her.)  Quite a bit of the internal structure and deck planking of the Victory are original, but the exterior hull planking is all relatively new - and in some ways decidedly un-authentic.  The Cutty Sark, however, is to a large extent an exception to the rule.  As the detailed information now on that website demonstrates, a quite surprising percentage of her original fabric is still extant.  I'm not quite clear on just how much of it is going to be replaced during the current restoration, but I have the impression that quite a bit of the original hull planking is going to be put back in place.

The Wasa, by the way, is not a good example of any allegedly preservative effects of water.  Several people from the joint where I work just got back from Stockholm, where they took part in a major study that's trying desperately to figure out just what needs to be done to keep her  from falling apart within the next few years.  The original application of polyethylene glycol back in the fifties and sixties doesn't seem to have worked in the long term.  If the ship had been left completely submerged in water she probably would have disintegrated by now; raising her and treating her probably slowed down the aging process, but the effects of exposure to the air have not been entirely reversed.  I'm confident that the scientists will work out a solution (she's the biggest tourist attraction in Sweden, as I understand it, so the government is intensely interested), but sending the old ship out into the Baltic certainly won't be it. 

Historical artifact conservation is an extremely complex combination of science (including physics, organic chemistry, biology, and heaven only knows what else), art, judgment, elbow grease, and, unfortunately, money; it goes far beyond sluicing decks daily with saltwater.  The Cutty Sark website should make it clear that the current restoration is being done in accordance with the very most recent policies, theories, and ethical practices agreed upon by the profession - and it's being done by people who know far more about it than either searat or I do.  They clearly understand the value and importance of what they're preserving, and are applying the collective knowledge of the various conservation-related professions to do it right.  That, rather than any of our personal opinions, is what counts.

Well, as a sailor, not a museum curator, I have to say that I disagree with just about every statement Prof Tilley has made on this subject.  Any ship, regardless of what it is made of, begins to die as soon as it is not in use.  Water is the VERY BEST support for a ship, as the hull receives support over its entire surface.  The same is not true in a dry-dock, even the best ones.  The reason ships like USS Constitution have hogged over the years is because of the excessive weight of their armament on the ends of the ship; just where the flotation is at its weakest.  This has been solved in USS Constitution by removing the incredibly heavy iron 24 Lb cannon from the bows and stern of the vessel, replacing these guns with fiberglass replicas.  Regarding Cutty Sark, no hogging should have been expected when first dry-docked, because she has never had heavy weights placed on her ends for long periods (200 years for Constitution?).  Further, while it is nice to preserve as much woodwork as possible, it should be remembered that in the long life of a well-taken care-of wooden ship, virtually every piece of timber in the ship will have been replaced, sometimes several times!  And this applies to HMS Victory, USS Constitution, and the Cutty Sark as well (and it appears during this current restoration, they will have to replace yet more!).  But as long as the ship is kept whole, as long as the lines are not altered, and as long as the ship is kept working, it's soul remains the same. 

As for the problems of wood and water, it should be noted that wooden ships are not really affected much by salt water (and teak, as in Cutty Sark, is almost completely impervious to it!), but it will rot very quickly in the presence of fresh water (note the remarkable preservation of 'Vasa,' sunk at the bottom of the Baltic for over 300 years).  This is why wooden ships with wooden decks MUST have their decks sluiced with salt water every day; both to keep the wood swelled and the seams tight, and to drive off the harmful effects of freshwater.  This is the source of the marine surveyors comment, 'more ships sink on dry land than ever do at sea.'  Cutty Sark has not seen any salt water on her decks in decades, and the freshwater still flows in from the rain.... A wooden ship in dry-dock for any amount of time must be constantly watched to make sure freshwater is not gathering in her bilge, and while this is possible in a commercial dock with the ship expected soon to be relaunched, the same is not true of a museum dry-dock.  A ship in commission has a full crew, including shipwrights, carpenters, boatswains, mates, riggers, painters and polishers, all of whom are at the top of their trade in constant employment ensuring the ship is in the best condition they can make it, all the time.  Compare that to the very best museum staff in the very best outdoor museum.... the most that can be afforded is a few old, tired men, and well-intentioned, but inexperienced 'younkers' doing their very best, but knowing full-well that it is a losing battle.

Virtually every 'museum ship' in the world is in dire need of serious maintenance, for just this reason; they are not used, and therefore die a little more every year.  Yes, if a ship goes to sea it is in danger from the elements, and people may die along with it.  That is part of going to sea in the first place.  Personally, I would rather hear of a ship sinking at sea in a typhoon than to watch that same ship slowly die at the dockside from rot and neglect.  In the case of 'Pride of Baltimore,' she was hit by a white squall with her hatches open.  It happens!  'Pride of Baltimore II' had her bobstay fail in the Mediterranean a couple years ago and lost both masts as a result (no-one injured), and now has two new masts.  Doubtless Cutty Sark and the other surviving 'opriginal' Tall Ships had many instances of lost spars, masts, etc, etc.  Yet this does not affect therir 'originality.'  HMS Victory has had AT LEAST three major rebuilds, and that was just in the 19th century!  The best solution in the event of such conflict is to build a replica.  And you should know that Cutty Sark is NOT the only existing clipper ship, thoug it is the only 'original.'  The Dutch have built TWO clippers recently, one of which they kept (Stadt Amsterdam), and the other of which they sold to the Brazilian Navy (Cigne Blanco).  The money they received for Cigne actually PAID for the cost of BOTH ships, and the Stadt Amsterdam now runs a very successful charter and sail training business (I have seen her several times in the Grenadines; a very fast ship indeed!).  Her design is a combination of several classic clippers, 'Flying Cloud,' 'Cutty Sark,' and 'Staghound,' and combines the best of each design.  And they also have the latest in modern systems, engines and safety gear, yet with no compromise in either the form or function of a clipper!  In other words, a Holy Relic, is at just as much risk as a fully functioning and commissioned ship, as is proved by this latest, near disasterous fire......