Cutty Sark and Blackadder

 

We have all been hearing about the plight of the Greenwich icon ship, Cutty Sark, and how money is needed to restore her and keep her in sparkling condition –  there is a link from her to the Greenwich Peninsula and a group of Brazilian divers who contacted me a couple of years ago about the Black Dder.  This was a wreck off the port of Bahia  and, putting two and two together,  they had realised that the ship’s real name had been ‘Blackadder’.

Blackadder was a sister ship to Cutty Sark, and famous in her day. She was built in 1871 at Bay Wharf, on the Greenwich Peninsula. You can get to Bay Wharf down the little footpath off the motorway just before you get to the entrance to the Blackwall Tunnel.   The shipbuilders were a  famous engineering firm, Maudslay Son and Field,  and maybe some the problems that  with Blackadder were to do with their lack of experience with  sailing ships.

Like Cutty Sark Blackadder was big ship with fine lines and lot of sail but she had a bit of a bad reputation – one writer says she was ‘rigged with curses dark … that ship will never be lucky’.   Much of this reputation was based on her maiden voyage when she lost two masts and a large chunk of deck in mid-Atlantic – despite this her highly professional crew had mended the damage and continued with a fast time into Rio.  Throughout her lifetime she was very prone to damage – but, perhaps more importantly, she made the high speeds she had been built for.   For fifteen years she was one of the great ships which raced across the oceans, made  headlines and created legends. In 1872 she set the record of Deal to Shanghai in 95 days, and similarly from Foochow to London. 

In 1899 she was sold to a Norwegian company and was wrecked, unromantically, while carrying a load of coal from Barry Docks to Bahia.   When the divers in Brazil found her wreck, nearly a hundred years later, they knew it was something special.  They have photographed her, measured her, and drawn a diagram of how she lies. To find a great ship, built in Greenwich, check out their web site: www.naufragiosdobrasil.com.br/naufblackstoandre.htm