A tale of two ships in London

Not a good morning today for one of London’s top tourist attractions, the Cutty Sark. The 19th century tea clipper sits in dry dock at Greenwich and it went up in flames in a mysterious fire around 5am today. While it looked pretty bad on the tv news footage, luckily the Cutty Sark had been closed for renovation since last year a large part of the ship had been dismantled and removed so work could be carried out, hopefully they can replace what got destroyed today and open the ship to visitors again next year as planned.

In the mean time there’s another tall sailing ship which is open for London visitors, this one is the Swedish Ship Gotheborg, a replica of an 18th century merchant ship that has been built using traditional methods and the same raw materials that were used 300 years ago. The 58 metre long vessel is made of 1000 oak logs and 50 kilometres of pine and all the nails, blocks, sails, cordage and ropes have been made by hand.

The Gotheborg left Sweden in October 2005 for a voyage to China and has so far stopped in Vigo, Cádiz, Recife, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Fremantle, Jakarta, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Chennai, Djibouti, Alexandria and Nice. London is her last stop before returning to Goteborg.

The Gotheborg arrived in London on Friday and is moored at South Quay in the West India Docks, right near Canary Wharf until 2 June 2007. The ship is open to the public on 22 May from 10am-5pm, 26-28 May from 10am-8pm and 29-31 May from 10am-3pm, tickets are £8. They’ll also be a SOIC Tent Village open to the public all days from 10am-8pm and there are related events including seminars at the near by Museum in Docklands, a concert at the ICA and a film presentation, The Linnaeus Expedition, at the BFI Southbank.

To get there either take the Docklands Light Railway to South Quay, Heron Quay or Canary Wharf or the Jubliee Underground to Canary Wharf.