VI. CUTTY SARK FOR MARITIME GREENWICH
In the last decade of the 20th Century and at the beginning of the 21st Century, three important events happened around Greenwich in the following chronological order:
First event: In 1991 a great storm blew down Queen Elizabeth’s oak. The huge oak had been located in Greenwich Park since the 12th Century. The tree had been practically dead since the 19th Century but the ivy which grew around its enormous truck had kept the tree standing for the last one hundred and fifty years.
Why was that event so important? In England oak trees are regarded as a national symbol. During the Civil War[vii], the future king, Charles II, hid himself behind an oak in order to avoid his “parliamentarian” enemies. Since then, that oak was named “Royal Oak”. The oak woo
