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Fire damage raises Cutty Sark restoration bill by 10 million pounds
It could cost an extra 10 million pounds (Dh72 million) to return the Cutty Sark to its former glory after the devastating fire.
- Evening Standard
- Published: 00:00 May 23, 2007
Davenport: It could cost an extra 10 million pounds (Dh72 million) to return the Cutty Sark to its former glory after the devastating fire.
The blaze has sent the total bill for repairing the clipper soaring, possibly as high as 35 million pounds.
Cutty Sark Trust chiefs had already raised 18 million pounds toward what they predicted would be 25 million pounds worth of restoration work.
Trust chairman Chris Livett has now warned that the original 7 million pounds shortfall now looks "significantly larger" and called for the public's help in raising the 17 million pounds now needed.
Following Monday's fire, the ship's website was inundated with people making donations. The website crashed because of demand.
A separate fundraising page for the public to donate money to help restore the ship has now been created. So far, 5,000 pounds has been raised, but the trust fears that without a lot more funding, work to repair the ship will not be able to continue.
"We are heavily relying on public funds for the restoration of the ship. We need their backing. If there's no funding, the Cutty Sark will be lost," Livett said.
Richard Doughty, chief executive of the trust, said structural engineers were to examine the ship to assess the impact of the fire. "We are already working to repair the ship," he said.
"A cursory inspection shows there isn't any devastating damage. It's serious but it's not the end of the Cutty Sark."
Simon Beams, the architect behind its restoration, said the fire could be "the best thing that ever happened to the ship."
'A good thing'
He said: "There are two possible outcomes to all this. Either she is completely devastated because the iron has become too brittle. But alternatively, in a perverse way, it could be a good thing as it has heightened awareness of the ship internationally.
"The heat may have stripped the paint which we would have had to do anyway, it may have retarded the degradation of the salt and actually strengthened the iron."
The ship had been due to reopen in November 2009 after substantial repairs. The trust had been planning to raise it by three metres in dry dock this summer to allow visitors to view the ship underneath, but warned there could be a "significant delay" now to its plans.
Arson investigators were expected to board the ship in a search for clues as to how the blaze began.
Police say they are still treating the fire as suspicious but were unable to examine the vessel yesterday as it was too dangerous to enter.
Officers have taken hundreds of hours of CCTV footage from cameras on the quayside and the surrounding area and were expected to begin viewing the film yesterday.
People were seen near the ship just before the blaze started in the early hours of Monday.
There were no electrical works going on inside the hull at the time.
Superintendent Martin Mitchell said police needed to hear from anyone who was in the area at the time or saw anything suspicious.
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