Cutty Sark acquires the Knowledge
A pioneering partnership between an established university and the custodians of an even older ship came together to claim not one, but two high tech awards last month, and is now on the track of solving the riddle behind one of the maritime industry’ s greatest icons.
Five years ago, London’s iconic
Cutty Sark
faced a death sentence. Experts predicted that the Victorian tea clipper would collapse within a decade if nothing was done to restore its structural integrity.Yet the Cutty Sark Trust feared that the very act of restoration could endanger the vessel. So its custodians called in neighbouring Greenwich University to predict how the decaying wooden hull and corroded iron frame would respond to restoration. The resulting project was named as the winner of the London Development Agency’s Knowledge Transfer Collaboration 2008, and collected the Knowledge Base Collaboration Award at the same time. The new awards demonstrate the benefits to business of using expertise in universities and colleges.
The university’s Professor Chris Bailey said, ‘We are applying computer modelling technology to the problem of how to restore the Cutty Sark‘s rotting pieces, without bringing down the entire structure. With our software, we can take the ship apart and put it back together again, and see if it collapses. So when engineers tackle the real thing, they know that they will be going about the job in the best possible way.’
Professor Bailey and his colleague Dr Stoyan Stoyanov are now working with the trust to understand how the Cutty Sark‘s structure will age over the next 100 years, and when further maintenance will be required. They are developing technology that will be used on other ships too, protecting maritime heritage across the globe.
Peter Mason, Cutty Sark‘s chief engineer comments that the project has been a ‘very fruitful and enjoyable collaboration’. He goes on to explain that the very first stage of the work was on the strength of the hull, but springing from this has been a systematising of what was learned so it can be applied to other projects, making it a ‘quantifiable technology with predictable outcomes.’
However, work on the Cutty Sark is not stopping there, as Mr Mason points out: ‘Our next project will be very different. We want to explore why the ship was so fast. What did the designer Hercules Linton know that his peers of the time did not?’
Cutty Sark Trust chief executive Richard Doughty added, ‘Sustainability and establishing a centre of excellence are part of our mission. The university’s vital work has enabled us to benefit from the considerable local talent in the university and the most valuable advancement of ship conservation knowledge. We congratulate and thank the university.’
