More bad news for the Falls of Clyde. The 1878 built windjammer, the last surviving iron-hulled, four-masted full-rigged ship, recently came close to sinking at the dock in Honolulu, Hawaii. On Thursday, the ship began taking on water by the bow, at Pier 7, where it has been docked for over a decade. The State Department of Transportation dispatched contractors with pumps and divers to attempt to stop the ship from sinking. Divers located and repaired four or five open seams through which the water was flooding.

HawaiiNewsNow.com reports: “I was here on Saturday and the vessel was laying flush like this here. When I got here this morning the whole bow was tilted forward,” said Ken Otebo, who was contracted to transfer water off of the ship onto his boat, the SOS Minnow. By 1 p.m. he said 60,000 gallons had been removed ― with plenty more to go.

“I believe the situation has at least been arrested,” said Otebo. “They’ve been able to stop the flow of water. They’ve been able to isolate where the cracks are. And we’ve been able to take as much water on our vessel as possible to raise the level of that vessel up.”

Last week we posted that a plan to transport the Falls of Clyde on a heavy lift ship back to where she was built in Scotland, had fallen through for financial and logistical reasons. There have been two other failed attempts to return the vessel to Scotland to be restored.  

The Falls of Clyde was impounded by the State of Hawaii in 2016, citing safety concerns. The Hawaii State Department of Transportation Harbors division has given the caretaker group, Friends of the Falls of Clyde, until February 6th to move the windjammer out of Honolulu harbor. Should the most recent deadline be missed, the state could put the ship up for auction.

The Harbor Divisions had previously determined that “the condition of the Falls of Clyde poses an unacceptable risk to navigation in Honolulu Harbor and a safety and security risk to harbor users.” Sadly, the near sinking seems to confirm that assessment.