In 1869 a top of the range British icon was born. She was the Cutty Sark, the fastest and most advanced clipper ship that had ever been built. Built for speed, her aim was to reach all corners of the globe and British Empire to bring back commodities along the main trade routes found across the oceans of the world. The Cutty Sark was the pride of the tea race, a clipper ship that ran tea from China back to Britain. In the ship’s heyday, the fastest way of transporting tea from its growing fields in the Empire to the teapot on the kitchen table of every household in Britain was via tea clippers such as the Cutty Sark.

In 1957 the retired Cutty Sark was put on display for the public and has since been a popular tourist attraction. However, in 2007, a fire shocked the nation as it tore through the historical tea clipper, leaving it a burnt out shell of its former self. Since then a massive £50 million restoration project has been undertaken and the Cutty Sark is once more open for business. Today her Majesty the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh were in Greenwich to re-open the fully refurbished Cutty Sark exhibition, just as they had originally done in 1957.