Security guards responsible for protecting the Cutty Sark on the night the historic ship caught fire falsified their log book and failed to complete their patrols properly, police said today.

The two men might have detected the blaze sooner, said DCI Dave Garwood, who led the 16-month investigation into the cause of the blaze, but one of the guards spent most of his shift dozing and reading his Bible in a closed cafeteria while the other admitted not patrolling according to instructions.

Officers have concluded that there is “no evidence” that the 19th-century tea clipper was subjected to an arson attack.

The most likely cause of the fire, which caused £10 million of damage, was an industrial vacuum cleaner which caught fire in the early hours of Monday, May 21, 2007.

The Italian-made Planet 200 machine, used to extract dust from part of the ship where concrete breaking was taking place as part of conservation work, was inadvertently left on over the weekend before the blaze broke out.

This was not noticed partly because a comprehensive fire safety plan that had been drawn up for the dry dock site in Greenwich, southeast London, where the Cutty Sark was being dismantled as part of a £25 million restoration project, was no longer being properly followed.

“Complacency made the possibility of fire far more likely,” DCI Garwood said.

Officers could find no records of fire checks taking place at the end of each working day, as specified in the plan, and construction workers employed at the site could not recall hearing the required weekly fire alarm tests.

The lack of a fire check on Friday, May 18, was a “missed opportunity” to prevent the blaze, DCI Garwood said.

The investigation also found that electrical equipment was often left plugged in, debris was not removed immediately and there were loose electrical connections on the site.

Richard Doughty, the chief executive of the Cutty Sark Trust, which owns the ship, said that the charity “will certainly be considering our position with our lawyers” following the report. Royal & SunAlliance, the Trust’s insurers, said that it did not comment on individual policies.

Heery, the construction management company for the site, made no comment.

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