Date: Wednesday, 20 January, 2010, 4:28

Fresh bid to salvage historic Scots ship

EXCLUSIVE: CHRIS WATT

Published on 20 Jan 2010

When the City of Adelaide docked in Australia in 1865, her cargo of
Scots migrants was welcomed with fireworks and open arms.

Now, a century and a half later, she lies derelict and forgotten in
Irvine, threatened with demolition in the face of dwindling funds.

This sorry situation could be about to change, however, through the
last-minute intervention of a group of Australians, determined to
salvage the historic clipper – formerly known as the HMS Carrick – for
their own national good.

The Government-backed delegation is to meet Culture Minister Fiona
Hyslop today for talks they say could secure the vessel’s future as a
museum in the city that bears its name.

Peter Roberts and Tom Chapman, directors of the firm Clipper Ship City
of Adelaide, are in the UK for a two-week round of negotiations that
could provide a breakthrough in the long-running funding dispute
surrounding the ship.

Widely known in Scotland as HMS Carrick, a name bestowed during a
spell with the Royal Navy in the mid-20th century, the ship formally
reverted to the City of Adelaide in 2001, and generations of
Australians have always known it by that title.

Mr Roberts said: “Of all the ships to have brought immigrants to
Australia, back to Captain Cook’s time and through the convict period
and so on, the only remaining sailing ship is the City of Adelaide.
She’s the last of the dinosaurs.”

The City of Adelaide could now be returned to Australia without any
extra cost to the people of Scotland, according to the visiting
delegation.

“One option is to destroy this important piece of heritage, and the
other is to spend equivalent sort of money and save it,” Mr Roberts
said. “It’s the state of South Australia’s 175th birthday next year,
and this makes a tremendous opportunity to recognise not only the
links between South Australia and Scotland – 26% of place names in the
state come from Scotland – but it respects the large Scottish
community in South Australia as well.”

Around a quarter of the region’s population is directly descended from
migrants who arrived on the City of Adelaide, Mr Roberts said, and a
significant proportion of passengers were Scots who travelled to
London or Portsmouth for the three-month journey.

The City of Adelaide was launched in 1864, just a few decades after
Europeans first settled in South Australia, and she was prized as one
of the most remarkable vessels of her time. Built in Sunderland by
William Pile, Hay and Co, she is one of only two surviving composite
hull clipper ships anywhere in the world. The other is the Cutty Sark,
five years younger than the City of Adelaide, which now holds pride of
place in Greenwich as one of London’s most popular tourist
attractions.

During her 145-year history, the City of Adelaide survived 23 return
journeys to Australia, and she served as a hospital ship and a Royal
Navy training vessel before sinking in 1991, since when she was
berthed on the Clyde and latterly has rotted onshore in North
Ayrshire.

The Australian delegation, which enjoys the support of their state
government, estimates that it would cost £500,000 to break the ship
up, and a further £650,000 to transport her safely to the southern
hemisphere.

A spokeswoman for Historic Scotland confirmed that today’s meeting was
due to go ahead, and that Scottish authorities were “continuing to do
all we can towards a positive solution being found”.

Rival interest has sprung up in Sunderland, where the ship was built,
and a local councillor staged a five-day occupation last year to
protest against the Adelaide’s planned demolition.

The Scottish Maritime Museum has been involved in negotiations, but
acting director Jim Tildesley said in October there was little chance
of Scotland finding the funds for a restoration, estimated at around
£10 million.

The Australian bid could prove the final hope for one of Scotland’s
most historic vessels.

Diaries chart hardship of the voyage to a new life. It was from the
City of Adelaide’s crowded deck that hundreds of Scots caught their
first glimpse of the colonies where they would start their new lives.

Today, the Australian group proposing to bring the ship home to
Adelaide has gathered the diaries of many Scots on the clipper’s
earliest voyages.

James Anderson McLauchlan set out in 1874, leaving his home in Dundee
at the age of 21. He kept a diary almost all the way.

In one typical entry, he records the hardships of life on board: “A
birth and a death both in the same hour … bereaved parents were Irish,
the child about nine months old, died about half past one … At 11 the
bell tolled for its burial, the body having been sewed up in sailcloth
and loaded at the feet was placed upon a board projecting over the
ship’s side. It was then covered over by the Union Jack. The captain
read the sea burial service in the middle of which at a given signal
it was consigned to the deep. A feeling of awe spread over us all.”

Another passenger, Melville Miller, left Dumfries with his wife in
1871, at the age of 30. In his surviving diary fragments, he records
the “bustle and excitement” of the passage – but also the discomfort
the voyagers encountered.

He wrote: “78 degrees in shade. I do not know how I am to exist in
Australia, when the heat is often over 100 degrees. We find the bath a
great comfort. I have a plunge every forenoon – the water is salty,
which, I think, must be healthful.”