Cutty Stark damaged by fire

The famous 19th Century ship Cutty Sark has been damaged when a fire broke out on a small part of deck three at 0721 hours on 19^th October 2014. Damage was confined to the deck and a small area of hull timbers was also damaged.

London Fire Brigade deployed twenty firefighters to the scene who were able to quickly bring the fire under control.

This is the second fire suffered by the ship in seven years. In 2007 a fire broke out during a planned £25 million renovation of the ship which resulted in a £10 million repair bill.

The quick response by firefighters and utilisation of contingency plans implemented following the 2007 fire most certainly limited further widespread damage.

Investigators are currently working to establish a cause of the fire and the ship has been open to visitors as usual since the fire with only a small part sealed off from to allow the investigation to continue.

A spokesman for London Fire Brigade Station said: ‘The Brigade were called just before 7.30am by an automatic fire alarm system. Crews from Greenwich fire station responded quickly arriving on the scene within four minutes, at which point to officer in command called for assistance.

‘Within an hour a team of 20 firefighters had extinguished the blaze which damaged hull timbers. The crews worked swiftly to contain a fire which had broken out on level three, a floor below the top deck, which had started in one of the museum sections. Unfortunately a small area of the interior lining of the hull was damaged. We worked with the Cutty Sark conservation team to get the ship open to the public again at 10.30am, around half an hour after its scheduled opening time.

‘We have our investigation team on site working with engineers from the ship. Having had a serious incident in the past there was a lot of pre-planning that goes into how we deal with situations like this. The Cutty Sark is an important part of the Greenwich Museum and they are very good with carrying out fire drills and fire safety checks.’