CUTTY SARK

three-masted British clipper ship, launched at Dumbarton, Dunbarton, Scot., in 1869. It was 212 feet 5 inches (64.7 metres) long, 36 feet (11 metres) wide, and had a net tonnage of 921; the name (meaning short shirt) came from the garment worn by the witch Nannie in Robert Burns's poem Tam o'Shanter. The vessel served in the EnglishChinese tea trade through the 1870s, later in the Australian wool trade, and finally as a training ship. In 1957, fully restored, she was installed in a concrete dry berth near the Thames at Greenwich, London, and was opened to the public by Queen Elizabeth II as a maritime relic and sailing museum.