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Last chance to save last of the
clippers
Determined group heads for
Scotland to save the CITY OF ADELAIDE
More news on old ships in need of preservation comes this time from a
Sunderland-based group who are travelling to Scotland in an effort to
intervene before a decision on the Sunderland-built clipper CITY OF
ADELAIDE consigns her, literally, to history. And also in the
shape of a petition urging the Prime Minister to step in.
The vessel, known now and for years as the CARRICK and once a familiar
sight on the banks of the Clyde at Glasgow, is currently rotting on a
slip at the Scottish Maritime Museum at Irvine on the Clyde coast.
Sunderland City of Adelaide Recovery Fund (SCARF) want the ship to go
back home to where she was built and become a focus of the area's
shipbuilding heritage.
However CARRICK is in a pretty abysmal state and the museum are due to
hold a meeting at which the final decision on the ship will be made -
which will almost certainly be to ratify her 'de-construction'. This
more elegant term for scrapping is being used as the museum want to
preserve what they can, if only through recording every piece taken
apart.
At the last minute the Sunderland group hope to intervene and to this
end a sizeable posse will be heading north to plead for a stay of
execution.
They have already raised £10,000 but experts reckon it will take many
millions of pounds to get the vessel into shape again. SCARF initially
wish to raise £1.5 million to secure the vessel and fund the
transportation of to her new home.
However the group recently suffered a setback when their call for a
meeting with their local council was rejected as councillors felt the
ship when restored would simply be a replica and that the costs
involved were too much for Sunderland taxpayers.
Meanwhile Sunderland Maritime Heritage have announced a petition to
the UK Parliament calling for intervention by Gordon Brown, the Prime
Minister. The petition states:
"We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to do everything
possible to prevent the scrapping of the City of Adelaide clipper ship
in Scotland by the Scottish Maritime Museum. This ship is arguably
more important than Cutty Sark and must be saved. In light of the very
tragic fire on the 21st May 2007 which damaged the Cutty Sark clipper
ship in London. We want to highlight the plight of the City of
Adelaide passenger clipper ship whose future is threatened in Scotland
as her owners (the Scottish Maritime Museum) want to dismantle and
scrap her. We urge the Government to do everything possible to force
them to urgently reconsider this decision. She must be safeguarded for
the future, while they may not be able to restore her now, they or
others may be able to do so in the future."
The pending decision to dismantle the ship has been met with sadness
and anger around the world, and even campaigners in Australia are
lobbying to have her taken to their country, to where she brought many
of their ancestors as emigrants from the Old Country.
The
CUTTY SARK, recently extensively damaged in a fire, and the CITY
OF ADELAIDE are the last surviving ships of their type.
For more information on the petition see:
http://www.sunderlandmaritimeheritage.org.uk/
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