I met the Cutty Sark in Australian waters very many years ago, and she was then the lovely ship. she had always been, She had just beaten the steam mail boat from Hongkong to Sydney—and the average speed of that steamer was 18 knots. That was sailing, and even at her moorings, with her yards tracing delicate cobwebs against a vivid sky, she looked as workmanlike and swift as one of today's speediest aeroplanes.
She was the fastest thing afloat, except for mechanically propelled craft. Her designers must have wrought love into her, I think, for she was in some respect more than a shi she was a happy legend, like the Round Table.
Men betted on the length of the Cutty Sark's homeward run much as we of today bet on the result of the Derby or the Leger. Yachts raced to the Channel-mouth to meet her as she approached soundings; and her story age news, Verily, a brought her back to end her days in the waters that spawned her.
At Falmouth, refitted, rerigged to the perfect likeness of her most palmy days, she lay—still useful: training-ship for a few selected cadets who would go to sea and carry with them her noble traditions. For a man's sea-cradle animates all his succeeding days. It is impossible for one bred within her slim sides to be anything but a first-rate sailor, For Air Cadets And now, gifted as auxiliary to the stately old Worcester—one of the nurseries of our seagoing race—she comes from Falmouth to Greenhithe, manned in the main by Worcester cadets; not under her own shimmering canvas, alas! but in tow of a steam tug. She will not drag on the tow, TI warrant. She.will not be reluctant to reach her final moorings—for she is to enact an even more important rôle than any she has hitherto played, H.M.S, Worcester, in addition to training cadets for the service. of the sea—under all three ensigns: White, Blue, and Red—is today specialising in the training of air-cadets. Rightly, perhaps, that speciality is for civil aviation, not Service flying; and in the coming days civil aviation will play a greater part in Imperial communications than ever the swift sky-monsters of the Royal Air Force can do, 'The Worcester is actually training what corresponds to our windjammer stalwarts of the past spacious days: aerial merchantmen. Aerial merchant men who can and will, if required, repeat their forerunners' tactics and turn their hands to the All ships in the harbour sọ their sirens and whistles and. ti was a "Good luck, pleasant signal from seven British tanka British-Indian troopship, and a li of the Harrison Line. The ship. followed out of harbour by hundi of rowing, sailing, and motor-boat Before she left, the Mayor of mouth, Alderman W. Reet, was pig on board by cadets from Worcester, who are sailing with He bade the clipper farewell on halt of the town.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.