The world's oldest surviving clipper has completed its final voyage from Scotland to Australia almost 125 years after it last made the trip.
The City of Adelaide arrived Down Under yesterday after three months being carried across the ocean on a container ship.
The clipper, built in 1864 in Sunderland to carry passengers and cargo to Adelaide and formerly known as The Carrick, left the care of the Scottish Maritime Museum at Irvine, North Ayrshire, in September last year.
During the trip the venerable vessel endured rough seas and the occasional storm, but has arrived undamaged at her new home.
City of Adelaide Preservation Trust director Peter Christopher, who led the team of volunteers that worked tirelessly for 14 years to return the ship to South Australian waters, said: "You just hope like anything that nothing goes wrong in those final few weeks. Now she's finally arrived there's a real sense of achievement added in with a big dose of relief.
"It's absolutely terrific after a long campaign to see a successful conclusion and to finally see the City of Adelaide back in the city of Adelaide. We never gave up, we always believed it was going to happen.
Jay Weatherill, Premier of South Australia, was among a crowd of around 100 dockside to welcome the ship.
He said that the volunteers' work had been "nothing short of miraculous", adding: "They have delivered for Adelaide a showpiece, a museum piece even, that speaks so deeply to South Australia's history, indeed the nation's history."
City of Adelaide made 23 return voyages between London and Adelaide and 250,000 South Australians can link their roots to her.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article