Great news! David O’Neill, director of the Falls of Clyde International, announced yesterday on Facebook that their bid to remove the historic tall ship Falls of Clyde, from Honolulu harbor, has been accepted by the state officials at the Department of Transportation (Harbors) in Hawaii.
The Falls of Clyde, launched in 1878 in Port Glasgow, Scotland, is the only remaining iron-hulled four-masted full-rigged ship and the only surviving sail-driven oil tanker in the world.
From their announcement:
Now we can work with engineering support to make plans to bring her home to Scotland, where it is planned that she will be rebuilt to sail the oceans as she once did. It is proposed that having established significant new technology contacts at the recent COP26 event – and in typical Clyde Shipbuilding history – she will become a demonstrator vessel for clean emission innovative technologies.
We are happy to talk to potential partners, solutions providers, event sponsors and investors, interested in clean emission Sailcargo, education at sea and skills training with communities as part of the process.
She is finally coming home!
Donations to help rebuild the Falls of Clyde can be made at, www.foci.scot
Good news indeed. Ironic, a sail-driven oil tanker. We visited her when she was part of the Bishop Estate’s Maritime Museum in Honolulu. Thanks to the many volunteers who kept her afloat these many decades.
This is wonderful to know not only will she be saved, she will also have a role in addressing climate change and may even sail again!
Thanks for keeping up with this saga and I’m sure you’ll continue to keep us informed of her progress,
Now to get her back to Scottland with out sinking
Hang on a moment there is still the little matter of about a million pounds for a heavy lift ship to make that sea passage as she is currently in no condition to be towed to mainland America where the former may mor easily be found I only hope a suitable sponsor can be found and quickly.
If she can be got back to the Clyde the project of replating her to a seagoing standard and re-rigging her given that most of her old standing rig masts and fittings were gas axed some years ago will be roughly three times the cost of putting JAMES CRAIG back to sea again in Australia, the CRAIG is the only comparable project and she was some 600 tons, the FALLS OF CLYDE is around 1800 tons that is the measure of the task ahead.
Chris