GOOD NEWS FOR FALLS OF CLYDE

12 November 2018: If any of our readers have read Sea History Magazine, the voice of National Maritime Historical Society, they are likely aware of the plight of the Scottish-built iron clipper ship, Falls Of Clyde, rusting and decaying in Honolulu, Hawaii. She has been featured in that periodical in the section entitled "Ships of a Lee Shore" as well (I believe) in a feature article. The harbor management deemed her a hazard and was threatening to sink her offshore as a reef. I have been aboard her (before the harbor authorities closed her to the public) and she is an impressive vessel. Efforts repeatedly failed to generate sufficient cash to get her back to Scotland where she was built. Now, courtesy of BBC print, we bring you the update and the good news that she may well be saved!

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A Clyde-built ship is to return home after years spent as a visitor attraction in Hawaii.

Built in 1878 in Port Glasgow, the Falls of Clyde is currently moored in Honolulu harbour.

A group campaigning to bring the ship back to Scotland said it had agreed a deal with a Dutch company to collect it in February next year.

The plan is to restore the Falls of Clyde and use it as an education and training vessel.

The Save Falls of Clyde campaign hopes a mooring can be secured in Greenock near to where it was built.

The Falls of Clyde transported sugar from Hawaii to America's west coast during the early part of its life before being converted into a bulk oil tanker.

Welcome flotilla

The plan is for the Falls of Clyde to be transported by a heavy lift ship, leaving Honolulu in February and arriving back in the Clyde in April where it will be greeted by a flotilla of small boats. 

The ship, the first of eight iron-hulled, four-masted vessels built by Russell and Company for the Falls Line, was named after a series of waterfalls in Lanarkshire.

During the late 1960s the ship returned to Hawaii where it had spent much of its working life, and where it was hoped it would be fully restored. 

However, it is now in a poor state of repair, and in 2008 it was suggested the ship might have to be scuttled.

Later that year, the ship's long-time owner, the Bishop Museum, agreed to sell it to a non-profit group which wanted to restore it.

The Save Falls of Clyde campaign to return the ship to Scotland was formally launched in 2016. 

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That is good news for all the folks who worked tirelessly to generate funding to return/restore the ship and we hope the plan, as stated above, comes to fruition. I suspect there will be more to tell our readers as February draws nigh!

Until next time, 

                                     Fair Winds, 

                                           Old Salt