The City of Adelaide is on the move
Final plans are being made to transport the world’s oldest clipper ship to Australia from a yard in Ayrshire.
The clipper, the City of Adelaide, constructed in 1864, was salvaged to the Scottish Maritime Museum at Irvine after she sank in the Clyde, and has been slowly rotting on a slipway. The museum could not afford the heavy costs of refurbishing what was left of the historic ship and had applied for permission to demolish her. This caused international concern and the Scottish Government has accepted a bid for the clipper to be relocated to South Australia, where she travelled so often in her working life. The last long journey will start in early September.
The City of Adelaide, or the Carrick as she was originally called, was one of the fastest and most luxurious clippers sailing the seas, carrying migrants and other passengers to South Australia and bringing goods back on the return journey. After 23 of these round trips to Adelaide the clipper was redeployed as a carrier on the North Atlantic timber trade. She came back to the UK to be used as a hospital ship in Southampton, and later still, ended up as a clubhouse moored on the Clyde in Glasgow, but suffered catastrophic flooding in the late 1980s. Since 1992 she has been mouldering on the slipway in Irvine while a debate continued about her future.
