The Cutty Sark, Britain’s famous 138-year-old tea clipper, was badly damaged in a fire Monday morning, according to the BBC. The ship was undergoing restoration at the time, and half of the planking and the masts had already been removed as part of the project. According to the article, the damage to the remaining strips of planking could be fixed.

This is kind of sad for me, as I have very fond memories of visiting this ship on a couple of occasions with my dad while visiting Greenwich. It is a simply stunning clipper and to see it in person was always really exciting for me. I can’t quite understand why someone would intentionally set it ablaze, as the BBC suggests happened.

The ship gets its fame from being one of the fastest clippers in the competitive China-England tea trade routes. The first ship of the season to arrive with tea was always met with huge profits, and the Cutty Sark always performed exceptionally well. In the famous race against Thermopylae, the Cutty Sark lost a rudder two weeks into the voyage and still managed to sail to port only one week behind the competitor. And that was with a jerry-rigged rudder, not a replacement.

The good news is that the chief executive of the Cutty Sark Charitable Trust, Richard Dougherty, believes that the damage can be undone.