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By kind permission of Wild Publishing Ltd and their bi monthly issue of "Traditional Boats & Tall Ships" magazine (issue April/May 2008).
TIME IS RUNNING out for the City ofAdelaide. Virtually unknown outside the world of maritime heritage, the world’s oldest surviving composite clipper ship is now a neglected hulk on an Irvine slipway. Amongst the very last representatives of the ships that were so vital in developing the colonies of Australia, she marks a pivotal moment in British maritime heritage.
Her history has not been enough to save her: City of Adelaide runs the risk of demolition in 2008. This will be the lamentable outcome if funds cannot be secured to save her, although her fate is currently postponed by the legal complexities of the case. It is the culmination of a saga that has threatened the Scottish Maritime Museum with lawsuits and liquidation and seems set to frustrate the best efforts of salvage projects based in Sunderland, where she was built, and Adelaide in South Australia, the city after which she was named.
Her history does not warrant such an ignominious end. Built on Wearside as a passenger vessel in 1864 by the noted William Pile, Hay & Co., the 791-ton City of Adelaide made twenty-three return trips to South Australia in as many years for merchants Devitt and Moore, once sailing between Britain and the fledgling state in a breathtaking 69 days. From 1887 she worked briefly as a collier on Tyneside before sailing the North Atlantic timber runs.
Cut down to a hulk, she was used as an isolation ward from 1893, moored off Southampton to contain an outbreak of cholera. Renamed HMS Carrick when purchased by the Admiralty in 1923, she served as a drill ship for the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve in Greenock, and during WWII was used for the training of Defensively Equipped Merchant Ships gunners. Decommissioned in 1946, she was presented to the RNVR as their club premises. Despite partial flooding and refurbishmen in 1978, she remained in this capacity until she flooded for a second time in 1989 and the RNVR could not afford to again restore her. She was given a grade-A heritage listing – the same as Edinburgh Castle – as Clyde Ships Trust took over, and in rather shady circumstances the City of Adelaide sat bsp;on Prince’s Dock in Govan. Following the dissolution of the Trust, the clipper was acquired by the Scottish Maritime Museum for a token £1. in 1992, after more than a year under water and at the cost of £1million, the SMM moved the clipper from Govan to her current resting place on a slipway in Irvine owned by what is now Ayrshire Metal Products. Over the next few years funding for the restoration program became dwarfed by the scale of work required.
When initial assistance fell so short of the extensive and necessary maintenance the City of Adelaide was put up for sale. She did not attract a single offer. The free five-year lease of the slipway had expired and the rental arrears owed to Ayrshire Metal Products now threatened the Museum with bankruptcy.
Further funding failed to materialise in all but the smallest amounts, and they faced a grim choice indeed: certain closure of the Museum, or final destruction of the City of Adelaide. The first application to have her destroyed was lodged in 2000, but refused the next year after a storm of protest and over a hundred objections from around the globe. North Ayrshire Council concluded that the importance of the City of Adelaide “…in both national and international terms cannot be understated.”
She was granted a temporary reprieve in 2003 to the tune of £400,000 donated by philanthropic businessman Mike Edwards, who wished to carry out a feasibility study into her commercial potential. While the majority of the money is still held to cover rental arrears, the donation also paid for a membrane covering the clipper, preventing further damage to the interior. The study concluded that she could never be made seaworthy while maintaining her integrity, and that upwards of £10million would be needed for her to be restored as a floating exhibit. These costs proved prohibitive for Edwards, who regretfully concluded that he could not take his first option on developing the clipper.
Fifteen years’ ownership of the City of Adelaide brought the Scottish Maritime Museum to the brink of bankruptcy. They now receive bare bones funding which is “…substantially lower than the support the Museum received prior to Local Government reorganisation in Scotland. The Funding specifically excludes the City of Adelaide and it is the potential and unknown financial liability associated with the vessel that concerns the Trustees of the Museum.”
In 2007, with no progress or any further significant funding, the SMM was placed again in the appalling position of applying to have the clipper broken up. Believing the options exhausted and the Museum under serious threat, North Ayrshire Council agreed to the conditional dismantling of City of Adelaide. A Steering Committee consisting of maritime experts under the guidance of National Historic Ships and Historic Scotland was set up to review potential strategies for the stricken clipper. This reluctant recommendation is as far as the Council can take the issue, as only the First Minister can agree the final destruction of a heritage-listed structure. This is the first time in Scottish history that an A-listed heritage construction has faced demolition.
The SMM – who rescued the submerged ship in the first place – is not a villain in this lamentable affair, though certain media articles have inferred as much through omission. It is important to understand their idea of ‘destruction’ as a measured disassembly, more in the form of a recorded study than wanton “So we beat on, boats against the current…”
F Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby demolition, although the archaeological value of such a study is questionable and the result, of course, is just the same: the end of the City of Adelaide.
Nobody wants to see the death of Britain’s only 19th century passenger vessel, but she hangs, Damoclean, over the remainder of an extensive collection of national importance. The clipper’s dismantlement has been sought only to protect the rest of the collection.
This is the point where the saga becomes complicated. As things stand right now, the Cityof Adelaide’s lifespan is marked by the progress of the Steering Committee in completing the survey work to project the options and timetable for the future of the clipper. This survey work cannot be carried out because Ayrshire Metal Products have denied access to the site as part of their legal battle to have the clipper removed. Catch 22! As a listed structure, the clipper ship cannot be removed without expert survey work by the Steering Committee; but AMP will not permit access to the site unless it is accompanied by a fixed date for her removal. That no-one has seen inside City of Adelaide since the Edwards report makes an estimate of her internal condition all the more difficult, further muddying the available options.
As long as AMP deny access to the slipway, she will slowly rot in her current legal limbo. If access is granted, then there are several possible outcomes: the proposed archaeological deconstruction could take more than a year and the costs have been guestimated over £1million, with no obvious source to fund what is essentially a negative heritage operation.
Sickeningly, if her fabric has deteriorated too drastically “…then it may only require two weeks work before a wrecking crane is brought in. That will cost far less that half a million.” Somewhat bizarrely, this frustrating stalemate may actually buy time enough for the operations that remain underway to save the stricken clipper ship.
SCARF a.k.a. the Sunderland City of Adelaide Restoration Fund are hampered by a lack of support from the local authorities, although those attitudes are starting to change with the gradual tide of public opinion. Things in the city are extremely political, and without the assistance of local government and some canny form filling, there is no way to access Heritage Lottery Funding. As with all tall ships, the money required is staggering. Readying the hulk for transportation from Irvine, renovating her and preparing the dock to house her would require a sum approaching £10million, while removal and transportation alone will cost a conservative £1.5million. SCARF argue that full restoration as a floating exhibit would restore the boatbuilding tradition to a Wearside fiercely proud of its maritime heritage – not to mention bringing a potential 80,000 tourists a year to
the north-east.
Peter Maddison is an independent councillor who entered local politics with the express aim of saving the clipper. Having already campaigned for City of Adelaide’s return for over a decade, he is not afraid to play the waiting game. Certain that public money will be freed up after the 2012 Olympic games, his first priority is preserving and moving the vessel from Irvine to a private site in Sunderland. Once her safety is assured, Councillor Maddison and SCARF harbour ambitions for a full restoration, bringing the ship back to her former glories in the city of her birth.
The South Australia operation has taken a slightly different approach. It is estimated that a quarter million of the state’s citizens can trace their origins to emigrants who first travelled on City of Adelaide, and this phenomenal cultural attachment has fuelled the bid to bring her ‘home’. The Save the Clipper Ship City of Adelaide Action Group realised some time ago that a full, AU$40million restoration of the clipper would not be possible, and their focus has since shifted from restoration to preservation. They are working hard with the state government to secure the AU$3.5million (£1.5million) needed to move her overseas; but even the 175th Jubilee of the state, due in 2011, has yet to generate enough confidence in the project to release the cash.
Despite this reticence, spokesman Peter Christopher is confident of success. The Action Group comprises naval architects, historians, maritime archaeologists, specialist heavy lifting engineers and marine developers. The range of their preparation is impressive, with a site developed in Port Adelaide, lifting equipment lined up, the patronage of the SA state governor, support of extensive legal services and, crucially, a thorough study demonstrating the sustainability of the City of Adelaide as a tourist attraction.
These comprehensive plans are the result of exhaustive voluntary efforts and demonstrate how seriously the South Australians are taking the rescue attempt. Or as Christopher puts it, “We decided years ago we weren’t going to save this ship by selling cakes on street corners!” Of course, support in kind can only take the salvation attempt so far before it comes again to a matter of cold, hard and immediate cash. Commercial property developer Tim Roper appreciates just how difficult it can be to guide a heritage project through the bureaucratic process. He is currently involved with the restoration of a listed mill in Somerset – the only one of its kind. He also keeps an eye on City of Adelaide, hoping to bring the clipper to Truro Harbour and create a flagship for Cornwall, restoring her as an art gallery, restaurant, café or even office space. Following an agreement with English Heritage that, should City of Adelaide come to Truro, they will not give her heritage listing – which would prohibit her development as a sustainable attraction – he is now working to free up the necessary support and bring more people onboard the salvation attempt. Roper firmly believes that the priority is rescue, as future plans are pointless if the clipper is destroyed. He is also convinced that the spectacle of moving City of Adelaide would be too great a public draw to be ignored; physically moving her from Irvine could be the trigger needed to draw funding from government bodies.
There is no doubting the value of City of Adelaide as a social document, a historical artefact or the strength of her contribution to British and Australian maritime heritage, so why is there no money to save an eminently valuable vessel?
This is not a simple matter, but it starts when “local authorities are struggling to empty bins,” let alone finance C19th restorations. As public spending is whittled year by year, budgets get tighter and it is hard enough to balance the books without gambling on the hidden costs of maintaining historic ships: that particular quagmire was neatly demonstrated by the drain of City of Adelaide upon the Scottish Maritime Museum.
Being the oldest composite clipper ship in the world does not make City of Adelaide the only such vessel. She has a younger ‘sister’ who just happens to go by the name of Cutty Sark.
The world-famous tea clipper was undergoing a comprehensive three-year restoration at the time of the infamous blaze on 21st May 2007, with repair work worth £25million funded chiefly by donations and matched by £11million of Heritage Lottery money. There is a popular misconception that Cutty Sark receives preferential treatment on account of her location in London, but this notion of centralisation seems thin when the Heritage Lottery Fund functions within such strict criteria to ensure that their limited resources go to the most deserving long-term projects.
The HLF are “…fully aware of the plight of the City of Adelaide and have had discussions with the Scottish Maritime Museum about her future, but have not received a formal application. Any such application would have to meet our usual criteria relating to conservation, access, involvement and learning. We would also want to be assured that our investment is sound with both the revenue future of the project and the applicant organisation being fully secure.”
Assistance provided by national bodies is bound in red tape, with public money percolated endlessly through committees, application forms and stiff competition. The Cutty Sark may be fortunate in her popularity and the professionalism of her Trust, but she is not spoilt simply by dint of location. There is no limited ‘pot’ for maritime heritage, hogged by the tea clipper. The HLF have invested nearly£100million in almost eighty historic ships throughout Britain; though City of Adelaide has yet to benefit from the Fund.
The recent awards of £21million to theMary Rose and a further £10million to Cutty Sark must now make City of Adelaide the priority vessel. She is simply too important to be destroyed: too rare, too old. A new feasibility study into her removal from Irvine was announced in February and National Historic Ships visited the proposed sites in Sunderland and Adelaide in March. It remains to be seen whether these new developments can provide the impetus so desperately needed to ensure the survival of the oldest clipper ship in the world.
There is also the first beginnings of an idea that the most immediately pragmatic solution would be to purchase the actual slipway on which City of Adelaide currently rests. Doing so could prove the most cost-effective proposal so far to preserve the ship and give much-needed breathing space to the Museum, although the residential development that has begun on adjacent territory could make the land too costly. Of the forty-six boats originally designated the Core Collection – the most historically and culturally important vessels in Britain – City of Adelaide must not be the first to be lost. Neither her self-evident value nor vociferous protest nor the efforts of dedicated volunteers have so far generated funding. But what else can be done?
She cannot earn revenue on trust alone, and no public body can simply conjure a spare £10million for her restoration or the £1million needed to preserve her remains. There are no blank cheques for traditional ships. No private body is willing to save her, and the stalemate rolls on, flagged by twin studies into the options: preservation, restoration, stagnation, demolition.
Her tragedy sets a dangerous precedent for all traditional boats: she teeters at the top of a slippery slope. If the drawn-out deconstruction of the oldest clipper ship in the world is not a national priority then the future funding and preservation of all historical ships is under threat.
Caught in limbo between the scrap yard and the slivers of salvation, the death of City of Adelaide would cap a desperately undignified saga of the last fifteen years. For her to be destroyed would be vandalism of the highest order.
City of Adelaide: 1864 – ?
