Cutty Sark aka Nannie Dee

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Jul 31, 2019
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Gastonia, North Carolina USA
I have been given a photo that was identified as the Cutty Sark while still in service. I have been informed this is not the Cutty Sark, a nick name that stuck as the name we know her by today! Cutty-Sark (Witch) Nannie Dee.
Wikipedia had this to say.
Figure Head.....she is the witch Nannie Dee from a Robert Burn's poem...Tam o'Shanter. Cutty Sark was a nick name given to the Witch Nanny Dee. The figure head as I have pointed out is named after the character created by Burn's. So my question is? The Cutty Sark is also known by the name Nanny Dee before her now known name. Let me say this, I have been informed this photo is from a private collection, I was allowed to share and she is identified as the then as in service Cutty Sark? Funny as it is, the Scotch Whiskey (Cutty Sark) is named after the ship. What a play on words!

69764377_2398145726921311_6275996656060071936_n.jpg
 
The Cutty Sark was launched as the Cutty Sark, and was renamed Ferreira in 1895, then briefly Mario Do Amparo in 1922, reverting to her original name Cutty Sark later in the same year. She was never called Nannie Dee officially!
 
Thanks shipbuilder, who better to know her History than some one from Britain. I posted on another Forum and was flat out told I was wrong in my saying the photo was the Cutty, regardless the name at the time of the photo, it is still the Cutty. Appreciate your time to answer my question. Have a great day my friend.
Rick:cool:
 
It is not a ship I have ever had much interest in, but there are loads of images on the internet showing her as either Cutty Sark or Ferreira with the painted ports. Cutty Sark was a good looking ship, although not very successful as a tea clipper (never having won a tea race). But became famous in the Australian wool trade, but getting home first with a few hundred tons of wool could not really compete with the big iron ships carrying thousands of tons of wool. My preference is for less famous ships that had equally interesting careers. For example, the Kaisow, below:
Bob



Kaisow  1868 Tea clipper.JPG
 
Cutty Sark is the Scots name for a short jersey or chemise, as can be found in reference in the poem by Robert Burns Tam O' Shanter. The witch, Nannie Dee, of whom Tam called out "Weel done Cutty Sark" in the fact that was all she was wearing :)

For school in primary 6 I had to learn one verse of Tam o' Shanter, it was just before the part where Tam comes across Kirk Alloway and the dancing witches:
" Weel mounted on his gray mare, Meg--
A better never lifted leg--
Tam skelpit on thro' dub and mire;
Despisin' wind and rain and fire.
Whiles holding fast his gude blue bonnet;
Whiles crooning o'er some auld Scots sonnet;
Whiles glowring round wi' prudent cares,
Lest bogles catch him unawares:
Kirk-Alloway was drawing nigh,
Whare ghaists and houlets nightly cry."
Ah the blessings of a Scottish edumucation and a family that worked in Dennys Shipyard, my uncle Tom could reel of the full poem from memory and was a great speaker at Burns night celebrations, I draw the line at reciting to a Haggis for my Belgian friends that come to dinner that night :)
 
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