Supplementary Materials for English 3.
2
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TEST 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on questions 1-13 which are based on the reading passage
below.
CUTTY SARK: THE FASTEST SAILING SHIP OF ALL TIME
The nineteenth century was a period of great technological development in Britain, and for
shipping the major changes were from wind to steam power, and from wood to iron and steel.
The fastest commercial sailing vessels of all time were clippers, three-masted ships built to
transport goods around the world, although some also took passengers. From the 1840s until 1869,
when the Suez Canal opened and steam propulsion was replacing sail, clippers dominated world trade.
Although many were built, only one has survived more or less intact: Cutty Sark, now on display in
Greenwich, southeast London.
Cutty Sark’s unusual name comes from the poem Tam O’Shanter by the Scottish poet Robert
Burns. Tam, a farmer, is chased by a witch called Nannie, who is wearing a ‘cutty sark’ – an old
Scottish name for a short nightdress. The witch is depicted in Cutty Sark’s figurehead – the carving
of a woman typically at the front of old sailing ships. In legend, and in Burns’s poem, witches cannot
cross water, so this was a rather strange choice of name for a ship.
Cutty Sark was built in Dumbarton, Scotland, in 1869, for a shipping company owned by John
Willis. To carry out construction, Willis chose a new shipbuilding firm, Scott & Linton, and ensured
that the contrast with them put him in a very strong position. In the end, the firm was forced out of
business, and the ship was finished by a competitor.
Willis’s company was active in the tea trade between China and Britain, where speed could
bring shipowners both profits and prestige, so Cutty Sark was designed to make the journey more
quickly than any other ship. On her maiden voyage, in 1870, she set sail from London, carrying large
amounts of goods to China. She returned laden with tea, making the journey back to London in four
months. However, Cutty Sark never lived up to the high expectations of her owner, as a result of bad
winds and various misfortunes. On one occasion, in 1872, the ship and a rival clipper, Thermopylae,
left port in China on the same day. Crossing the Indian Ocean, Cutty Sark gained a lead of over 400
miles, but then her rudder was severely damaged in stormy seas, making her impossible to steer. The
ship’s crew had the daunting task of repairing the rudder at sea, and only succeeded at the second
attempt. Cutty Sark reached London a week after Thermopylae.
Steam ships posed a growing threat to clippers, as their speed and cargo capacity increased.
In addition, the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, the same year that Cutty Sark was launched, had
a serious impact. While steam ships could make use of the quick, direct route between the
Mediterranean and the Red Sea, the canal was of no use to sailing ships, which needed the much
stronger winds of the oceans, and so had to sail a far greater distance. Steam ships reduced the journey
time between Britain and China by approximately two months.
By 1878, tea traders weren’t interested in Cutty Sark, and instead, she took on the much less
prestigious work of carrying any cargo between any two ports in the world. In 1880, violence aboard
the ship led ultimately to the replacement of the captain with an incompetent drunkard who stole the
crew’s wages. He was suspended from service, and a new captain appointed. This marked a
turnaround and the beginning of the most successful period in Cutty Sark’s working life, transporting
wool from Australia to Britain. One such journey took just under 12 weeks, beating every other ship
sailing that year by around a month.
The ship’s next captain, Richard Woodget, was an excellent navigator, who got the best out
of both his ship and his crew. As a sailing ship, Cutty Sark depended on the strong trade winds of the
southern hemisphere, and Woodget took her further south than any previous captain, bringing her
dangerously close to icebergs off the southern tip of South America. His gamble paid off, though,
and the ship was the fastest vessel in the wool trade for ten years.
As competition from steam ships increased in the 1890s, and Cutty Sark approached the end
of her life expectancy, she became less profitable. She was sold to a Portuguese firm, which renamed
her Ferreira. For the next 25 years, she again carried miscellaneous cargoes around the world.
Badly damaged in a gale in 1922, she was put into Falmouth harbor in southwest England, for
repairs. Wilfred Dowman, a retired sea captain who owned a training vessel, recognised her and tried
to buy her, but without success. She returned to Portugal and was sold to another Portuguese
Supplementary Materials for English 3.2
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company. Dowman was determined, however, and offered a high price: this was accepted, and the
ship returned to Falmouth the following year and had her original name restored.
Dowman used Cutty Sark as a training ship, and she continued in this role after his death.
When she was no longer required, in 1954, she was transferred to dry dock at Greenwich to go on
public display. The ship suffered from fire in 2007, and again, less seriously, in 2014, but now Cutty
Sark attracts a quarter of a million visitors a year.
Questions 1-8
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the reading passage?
In boxes 1-8 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
1 Clippers were originally intended to be used as passenger ships.
2 Cutty Sark was given the name of a character in a poem.
3 The contract between John Willis and Scott & Linton favoured Willis.
4 John Willis wanted Cutty Sark to be the fastest tea clipper travelling between the UK and China.
5 Despite storm damage, Cutty Sark beat Thermopylae back to London.
6 The opening of the Suez Canal meant that steam ships could travel between Britain and China
faster than clippers.
7 Steam ships sometimes used the ocean route to travel between London and China.
8 Captain Woodget put Cutty Sark at risk of hitting an iceberg.
Questions 9-13
Complete the sentences below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet.
9 After 1880, Cutty Sark carried ………………………… as its main cargo during its most
successful time.
10 As a captain and …………………………., Woodget was very skilled.
11 Ferreira went to Falmouth to repair damage that a …………………………. had caused.
12 Between 1923 and 1954, Cutty Sark was used for …………………………..
13 Cutty Sark has twice been damaged by ………………………… in the 21st century.
