City of Adelaide goes by barge

City of Adelaide was built in Sunderland UK in 1864 and along with the Cutty Sark is one of only two clipper ships still in existence. In its heyday the ship made regular voyages to Australia with passengers and cargo. In 1893 the vessel became a hospital ship, and in 1924 a training ship at Irvine, renamed HMS Carrick. In 1991 the ship sank in Princes Dock, Glasgow, and lay on the bottom of the River Clyde for a year before being raised and taken to Irvine where it lay rotting on a slipway at the Scottish Maritime Museum.

A consortium from Adelaide, South Australia, has acquired the vessel and the first stage in the complex project to transport the now quite fragile hull started in earnest in September when the tug Dutch Pioneer and pontoon barge Lastdrager 28 arrived in Scotland.

The vessel was loaded onto the deck of the 2,487dwt barge, a very recent addition to the Van Der Wees fleet. In its current state the clipper weighs over 450 tonnes and is 54m long and was taken onboard supported by a steel framework and secured by sea fastening once in place.

The barge and its cargo left Irvine on 20 September towed by the 23 tonnes bollard pull Dutch Pioneer bound for Chatham Docks on the river Medway in England, where it arrived on 25 September. After some additional preparatory work the convoy left Chatham on 17 October bound for Greenwich on the Thames. For this leg of the journey, and subsequent voyage to the Netherlands, Dutch Pioneer was joined by the Louise Van Der Wees, a single screw tug of 24 tonnes bollard pull.

With the barge moored very close to the Cutty Sark, the Duke of Edinburgh visited the ship and formally reinstated the name City of Adelaide. Within a few days the convoy arrived in Rotterdam where preparations will be made to transport the vessel to Australia aboard a heavy lift ship.