The Cutty Sark will be restored and ready for new visitors in time for the 2012 Olympics.   The ship was nearly destroyed by fire in 2007.    The other, albeit just barely, surviving composite clipper ship, the City of Adelaide, which has been threatened with destruction, has received a two month delay to allow additional time for her to be moved.

Cutty Sark to be restored in time for 2012 Olympics

Delay on Adelaide clipper’s fate

The three masts of the beautiful Cutty Sark, an icon on the London skyline, will rise again over a fully restored ship in time for the 2012 Olympics, with the last gap in the funding completed by a £3m grant announced today by the government.

Planned restoration work was already well underway in May 2007 when images went round the world of the hull reduced to a smoking heap of charcoal in a disastrous fire. The column of black smoke was seen for miles, and many who viewed its still smouldering aftermath wondered if the ship was beyond salvation.

Regarding the City of Adleaide:

The Scottish Maritime Museum says a decision on the fate of the City of Adelaide clipper will be delayed while it waits on a funding announcement from the Scottish Government.

The ship is nearly 150 years old and is on a slipway near Glasgow.

A Museum official says the ship was supposed to be moved by March but will be protected until the end of May while the government decides whether it can help pay to have it removed.

Peter Roberts from the Save the Clipper City of Adelaide group has submitted a tender to return the ship to South Australia and says his plan will need amending.

“When there is a change of date, a different set of vessels have to be utilised to solve the logistics problem and if they’re talking about a two-month delay then we will have to look at different ships to use in our solution,” he said.

The clipper brought immigrants to Port Adelaide between 1864 and 1886.