This week I’ll be discussing a bit of an odd family heirloom.  Perhaps heirloom is the wrong word, as basically I was asked if I wanted it, otherwise, it would be thrown away.  For some odd reason, I felt a strong urge to keep it, and so now, it sits in my room, sort of on display, sort of just in there.

The replica model of “Cutty Sark”

This model, weighing somewhere around 3 pounds, it’s awfully light, is about 18″ long and 18″ tall (it doesn’t look that way but when you factor in the whole length and the tallest point, that’s a fair approximation.  Regardless of its dimensions, what I find additionally puzzling about the model is why it exists, or even more importantly, why my grandfather had it.  I researched the original Cutty Sark ship and it was a tea clipper constructed in 1869 that became a wool transport ship as steam technology was making sailing ships slow and outdated.  This was a fairly fast ship for a sailer, as it held the record from Australia to Britain for ten years; obviously the record was broken by a steam ship.  After its transport value diminished, the Cutty Sark exchanged hands and names a few times, lasting two generations in Portugal, but was finally repurchased for preservation in 1953 and has officially been out of service since December of 1954.  It would be important for the family ties to share that no one in my family is British nor Portuguese.  My honest guess for why my grandfather had this was that he was a history buff.  He was exactly one of those people that every time you saw him, he had read a new book about World War II.. I was always surprised with how limited his readings seemed to be, yet how extensive his knowledge of world history was.  He and my grandmother were world travelers, having been to dozens of countries, from Britain to France to Prague to Spain and quite possibly everywhere in between.  So as an honest guess, my grandparents were in Britain, and he had either known about or seen signage for the Cutty Stark museum, and bought this replica as a souvenir, perhaps the start of a collection that never got off the ground.  Maybe I’m mistaken, maybe it was a gift, or something given to him by a friend, I couldn’t possibly know.  I could only make the assumption that this wooden vessel is around or less than 60 years old, as that was when the ship was retired to be preserved.

Regardless of this, I still have no idea why I was so fascinated with it and wanted to keep it.  I’d never heard of the ship before so there certainly wasn’t any rationale for me to keep it due to my fascination with it.  Perhaps the thought of throwing it away was too painful.  Maybe I too want to preserve the Cutty Sark.  Personally, I wouldn’t find that true, and I’d probably place a lot more value on nostalgia, as my grandfather didn’t have many positions of this nature, and I wanted to maintain it for his sake.  Regardless, it sits with me, continuing to serve no functional purpose, just leaving me a memory, and a reason to wonder.