The saving of the City of Adelaide

Jim Tildesley: The Saving of the City of Adelaide.

The Society met by Zoom for this well-illustrated talk chaired by Alastair Gair.

City of Adelaide is a standard wooden clipper ship, the oldest surviving in the world, built in 1864 at Sunderland. She has been saved from being broken up a number of times due to luck and her significance.

The ship was designed to carry passengers and cargo purely between Great Britain and the State of South Australia, which was run as a commercial operation, not taking convicts. She operated this route for 23 years under five captains, making one return journey per year. The ship carried emigrants to South Australia and returned with cargo including wheat, copper ore and wool.

A maximum of 257 steerage passengers, who had a trade wanted in Australia, travelled free. There were 14 en-suite First Class cabins. A varied cargo including clothes, medicines, books and sewing machines was carried to South Australia to meet the needs of a new and growing settlement.

By 1887 steam powered ships had reduced the demand for clippers and the ship was sold to carry coal from Newcastle to London, then timber from Canada to Ireland and Scotland. In 1892, well past her working life, she was brought to the Clyde at Dumbarton, derigged and offered for sale. 

Southampton City Council bought her to use as a quarantine ship until 1914, when the Military reserved her for scarlet fever cases during WW1.  

After WW1 the ship was quickly sold to the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR) and brought to Scotland, arriving at Irvine in 1923. Her name was changed to HMS Carrick and a gun was sited on the poop deck roof. During WW2 this made her suitable for training gunners to be sent out on merchant ships.  

By 1947 HMS Carrick was no further use to the Navy and was moved to the Clyde at Glasgow to be a base for the RNVR Club until 1990, when she began to ‘hog’ and sank.  The RNVR, concerned about a possible recurrence, passed the ship on to the newly formed Clyde Ship Trust which intended to make her the focal point of a museum at Prince’s Dock in Glasgow. However, permission to acquire the dock was refused and the ship sank again in strange circumstances.

The ship was raised undamaged and by then Historic Scotland had designated her a listed building. The speaker was approached to see if the Scottish Maritime Museum could rescue the vessel, so she was made safe and towed to Irvine. The museum raised £1 million and started work. More than 68% of the original hull was usable, but by 1999 funding sources had dried up and the ship needed a new home. An application was made in 2000 for consent to demolish the listed building. The many objectors included the Federal Government of Australia and consent was refused. 

In 2010 the city of Adelaide’s proposal of a complex project to move the ship to South Australia was accepted and ownership was exchanged in 2013. The ship was placed on a cradle onto a barge and towed to Greenwich to be renamed ‘City of Adelaide’ by the Duke of Edinburgh. She was then taken to Rotterdam, the wood chemically treated and wrapped in plastic to satisfy Australian regulations and the cradle transferred onto a Heavy Lift Ship. The ship eventually arrived in Adelaide to an enthusiastic welcome, fueled by the family connections many residents had with her. 

City of Adelaide is cared for by a charitable Trust and is being treated and restored. She is a tourist attraction with a permanent home and is ready to be craned onto land, where a historic maritime village is planned. Meanwhile some items belonging to the ship have surfaced in Scotland and been transported to Adelaide. This was an amazing project and a great achievement in which the speaker was glad to have been involved.

After answering questions from the audience, the speaker was thanked by Alastair Gair for his excellent talk.