2024年1月12日发(作者：)

雅思（阅读）模拟试卷107

(题后含答案及解析)

题型有：1. Reading Module

Reading Module (60 minutes)

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on

Reading Passage 1 Sark: the fastest sailing ship of all timeThe 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

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

Sark’s unusual name comes from the poem Tarn O’Shanter by the

Scottish poet Robert Burns. Tarn, 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 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 contract 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 ’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 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 1878, tea traders weren’t