29 Aug 2010

Clipper ship to be sent to Australia

6:54 am on 29 August 2010

The world's oldest passenger clipper ship is to be sent to Australia from Scotland for exhibition at Port Adelaide.

The City of Adelaide, which is currently on a slipway on the west coast of Scotland, faced being broken up for display in a museum. It is 145 years old.

Campaigners from Sunderland, in northeast England, where the ship was built, have failed to convince the Scottish government to keep the vessel.

The ship, which predates the Cutty Sark, carried passengers and wool between Australia and Britain on more than 20 round trips.

Later known as the Carrick, it has been left to the elements.

Campaigners competed to re-float the vessel and take it to Australia or back to Sunderland.

Scottish Culture Minister Fiona Hyslop said: "We can now have a link between Scotland and Australia which allows both nations to share the vessel's historical, cultural and social significance."

The City of Adelaide Preservation Trust aims to preserve the vessel at Port Adelaide in time for the city's 175th anniversary of settlement next year.

Chairman Creagh O'Connor said he was "thrilled and delighted" after a decade-long campaign.