Clipper Ship 'City of Adelaide'

Clipper Ship Cradle About to Set Sail for Scotland

Media Release

28 October 2011

The project to return the world’s oldest clipper ship, the ‘City of Adelaide’, to Port Adelaide will reach another important milestone tomorrow with the completion of the base of a giant 100 tonne steel cradle. A ceremony at Gillman will herald the completion of the cradle base that will support the clipper during its transport from Scotland to Australia. The cradle base has been pre-assembled for integration checks and will be shipped to Scotland in a week’s time.

Valued at $1 million, the cradle has being jointly donated by over a dozen Adelaide and SA regional firms. The ceremony will take place at Samaras Structural Engineers who have donated both labour and materials to the project and will be marked by the cutting of a ribbon by Senator Don Farrell, a staunch supporter of the project and the descendant of a clipper ship captain.

Senator Farrell said "This is an excellent project that helps to mark South Australia's 175th year. South Australians should be proud, as I am of the collegiate spirit of the engineering firms from across the State that have combined forces to build the cradle. The 'City of Adelaide' is an icon of the foundation era of Australia's social and economic history. It is one of only four surviving sailing ships in the world to have transported emigrants from the British Isles to any destination and will be the only surviving sailing ship in Australia to have brought migrants here."

Senator Farrell, George Samaras, the General Manager of Samaras Structural Engineers, Creagh O’Connor, the Chairman of the City of Adelaide Preservation Trust, and a group of supporters from the Trust and other donors will also attend the ceremony.

Adelaide firms Aztec Analysis and Bown Contracting and Drafting have designed the cradle so that it can be built over multiple South Australian sites, and then shipped to Glasgow in shipping containers for assembly underneath the ‘City of Adelaide’. The clipper and cradle will then be rolled onto a barge for transfer to a deep port, where it will be transferred onto an ocean-going ship for the voyage to Australia.

Background

The ‘City of Adelaide’ and the ‘Cutty Sark’ are the world’s last two surviving clipper ships. Built in 1864, the ‘City of Adelaide’ is the elder of the two. It made annual runs for a quarter-century from London to South Australia carrying thousands of UK and European migrants. In Australia today, a quarter of a million living descendants can trace their origins to passengers that sailed on the ‘City of Adelaide’.

The ‘City of Adelaide’ currently sits on a slipway in Scotland and its owners, the Scottish Maritime Museum, are being evicted from the site. With few options, they called for tenders to demolish the ship. The City of Adelaide Preservation Trust lodged a bid to ‘demolish’ the ship by taking it to Australia in one piece. Late last year the Scottish Government announced that the Australian solution was the preferred bidder.

To date 75% of the project costs have been funded through contributions from Scottish Government, Adelaide City Council and Port Adelaide Enfield Council, as well as public and corporate donations. The South Australian Government is contributing land to display the clipper at Cruickshank Corner in Port Adelaide.