London - The world’s oldest surviving clipper ship took to the seas for the final time last week, making the long journey from Scotland to Australia.
The City of Adelaide, which is five years older than London’s Cutty Sark, heads Down Under 149 years after she first transported European settlers to Australia.
The battle for the historic clipper has gone on for 14 years as both Sunderland, where the ship was built, and Adelaide appealed to the Scottish government to be given ownership.
She was built in 1864 on the River Wear and plied the waters between Australia and Europe, transporting settlers and aiding Australia’s wool and copper exports.
Her sailing days ended in 1893 but she was later used as a floating hospital and a training ship named HMS Carrick.
The historic clipper sank in a Glasgow dock in 1991 and despite being raised a year later and moved to the Scottish Maritime Museum in Irvine, North Ayrshire, she languished on a slipway as the cost of repairs was put at £10-million. Experts said the cost would be the same as building a new ship and recommended she be scrapped – but two rival campaigns were started to save her.
Australia’s claim to the ship has not been without controversy. In February last year Peter Maddison, a former councillor from Sunderland, occupied the ship in protest at it being moved to Australia.
He claimed that Sunderland needed the jobs that the restoration project could provide more than Australia needed another tourist attraction. He said that the wreck would not survive under the hot Australian sun and that the northern hemisphere provided the best climate for her.
The Sunderland City of Adelaide Recovery Fund (Scarf) also sought a ban on the ship’s export, claiming it is of national cultural interest.
However, two weeks ago, the Australian organisation, the Clipper Ship City of Adelaide, took possession of the ship, three years after it won the bid to transport the clipper south.
She will be moved in a 100-ton steel cradle to Adelaide, via London, and is not due to arrive until spring next year.
It is hoped she will become a major maritime attraction in Australia. About 25 000 people in Australia can lay claim to having an ancestor emigrate Down Under on the City of Adelaide and the aim is to make the ship a centrepiece of a museum about Australia’s maritime heritage and European settlers.
(See www.cityofadelaide.org.au) – Daily Mail