An attempt by the Scottish Maritime Museum to demolish the City of Adelaide has not proceeded because demolition does not meet the conditions for 'dismantling' the ship stipulated by the local planning authority. Apparently the Maritime Museum, whose funding difficulties have been much publicised, do not have the funds to dismantle the ship in large pieces as specified in the planning conditions. 

Our own proposals for the ship have received interest from potential funders in the UK and Australia but with the current economic climate raising funds is undoubtedly a challenge; we are continuing our efforts. We understand that both the Sunderland group and the Adelaide group are also continuing their efforts and at least one of them is now considering lower cost solutions for the preservation of the hull, without re-rigging and recreating her interior, as we have proposed.

Meanwhile some welcome publicity for the ship could be on the way. Traditional Boats & Tall Ships magazine have contacted us with a view to running an article on the City of Adelaide and the ship's patron, His Excellency Rear Admiral Kevin Scarce AC CSC RANR Governor of South Australia, is due to visit the UK in the spring. 

Following the 30 July meeting of the panel of experts overseeing the deconstruction of the City of Adelaide the Scottish Maritime Museum issued a press release which says in part:

'The panel were briefed on a number of approaches that had been made to the Museum concerning the future of the vessel. None of the approaches had, as yet, demonstrated that they had sufficient funding to undertake the removal of the vessel from Irvine. The Chairman of the Museum Trustees, Sam Galbraith said that he and his colleagues welcomed all serious approaches to obtain the vessel but underlined the requirement that the Trustees would only consider fully funded schemes that demonstrated that the vessel would be removed from its slipway to a specific timescale. In the meantime the work of the Panel of Experts was focused solely on the need to provide an operational plan for the deconstruction of the vessel in order to meet the conditions of North Ayrshire’s planning approval.'

Details of the timescale for the planned deconstruction work, and therefore the time available for fund raising, is not yet clear.

On the 20th of July this proposal was submitted to the Steering Group advising on the City of Adelaide's future with the request that they include it on the agenda of their next meeting on 30 July 2007. We have requested an approval in principle from the Scottish Maritime Museum and Historic Scotland (both members of the Steering Group) in order to enable the proposal to be put before possible funders.

This website has been launched to support a novel proposal for saving the City of Adelaide's hull.

You can find out more and download the web edition of the proposal by going to 'The Proposal' section of this website.

For further information please use the "contact us" button above.