BHC3277 © National Maritime Museum
Global trade, global lives: the maritime community since the nineteenth century
Thursday and Friday, 6-7 February 2020
Lecture Theatre, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich
2019 marked 150 years since the launch of Cutty Sark. Over her long life, the ship has formed part of Britain’s vast merchant fleet, and later provided the setting for training new generations of mariners. Cutty Sark now stands as a memorial to the Merchant Navy and a national museum site, shaping how we understand maritime trade and the human experience of being at sea.
Built for the China tea trade, Cutty Sark would go onto trade in Australian wool before becoming a Portuguese general cargo carrier. More than 600 men from over 30 different nations served on the ship which would also visit nearly every major port in the world. Today, as the sole surviving extreme clipper ship on the globe, she is a representative of international trade, maritime communities, the merchant marine in the age of sail as well as the subject of innumerable cultural interpretations and much more beyond.
This conference will take the opportunity offered by Cutty Sark’s 150th anniversary to provide a forum for interdisciplinary research and new perspectives on the merchant marine and maritime communities from the nineteenth century to the present day.
Find the programme here: Cutty Sark 150 Conference Programme
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