Name City of Adelaide

Adelaide, South Australia was laid out in 1837 and named in honour of Queen Adelaide, consort of William IV. The new community prospered and, before telegraphic communication and the railways, shipping formed the sole avenue of commercial intercourse for passenger travel and movement of goods.

A regular visitor to the region was Captain David Bruce, in the 398 ton barque IRENE. In partnership with several others including London ship owner Mr Joseph Moore, Captain Bruce resolved to build “expressly for the trade a new vessel in which all the requirements his experience could suggest would be met”. His order was placed in 1863 with William Pile, Hay and Company of Sunderland, a foremost shipbuilder. Built under survey from Lloyd’s, the vessel was of composite construction.An iron frame was sheathed in a variety of timbers according to purpose, including English and American pine, German and English oak, yellow pine and Baltic red pine, and the external wooden structure was felted and yellow-metalled.

CITY OF ADELAIDE was equipped with Cunningham’s Patent Self-Reefing topsails and initially ship-rigged. A top-gallant forecastle provided accommodation for the seamen and aft a half-rounded poop of 57 feet from the stern to the main backstays accommodated the master, officers and first class passengers. Surviving drawings show a long saloon fitted with tables, seats, a sideboard and a pianoforte, flanked port and starboard by 14 cabins.

From 1864 to 1886, CITY OF ADELAIDE was managed by Messrs Devitt and Moore, agents for Duncan Dunbar and the Glasgow Loch Line. She ran a fast liner service between London and Adelaide, making approximately one round voyage every year, carrying general cargo outward, and up to 24 passengers. 18 of these were in first class, 6 in second on her maiden voyage and, when necessary, basic accommodation for emigrants was fitted out. A diary of the ship’s first passage, kept by 16 year-old Miss SA Bray survives and is held in the Strathclyde Archives, and at least two others from later voyages have also survived. Homeward bound, cargoes included typical South Australian produce, such as wool (up to 2,779 bales could be carried), leather, wine, bark and copper, together with passengers.

On June 1 1887, all shares in the vessel were sold to a Dover coal merchant, Charles Havelock Mowll. Her rig was reduced from ship to barque for more economical working and she worked briefly in the collier trade from the Tyne to the Thames, before being sold onwards again to Belfast timber merchants, Daniel and Thomas Stewart Dixon. Still barque-rigged, she was engaged mainly in the North Atlantic bulk timber trade, until 1893. Acquired in that year by the Corporation of the City of Southampton, she was dismasted and converted to become a hospital isolation ship. She was taken off the register on February 7 1895.

In 1923, the Admiralty purchased her (for the sum of £2500), to become a drill and training ship for the Clyde Division RNVR. She was towed north for conversion, re-named HMS CARRICK, and moored at Greenock until the end of World War Two. Placed on the disposal list at the end of the war, CARRICK was converted and, prior to decommissioning in 1948, was presented to the newly formed RNVR Club of Glasgow. Berthed above the Clyde suspension bridge, she became a familiar sight. By the 1980s, she was a burden to her owners and in 1990 she was taken on by a now defunct body called the Clyde Ship Trust. She was moved to the Prince’s Dock where, in 1991, unaccountably she sank at her moorings.

In 1992, with the encouragement of Historic Scotland and Strathclyde Regional Council, and under pressure from developers, the ship was raised and taken over by the Scottish Maritime Museum. She was towed to Irvine, on the Ayrshire coast, where she was slipped and some progress made with her restoration. However, these efforts foundered in 1999 and the Museum unsuccessfully tried to sell her.

In May 2000, as funding sources dried up, the Museum applied to the local District Council for Listed Building Consent to demolish her. The bid was rejected in February 2001 on the grounds that the case for demolition of a listed structure had not been made with sufficient force, nor had the applicants demonstrated that every line of enquiry had been exhausted in pursuit of a practical alternative, as required by the statutory legislation governing the demolition of listed structures.

Long considered unable to be recovered, an Adelaide group stepped in with a plan to return the vessel to Australia.  She made the journey to Adelaide in 2014, fixed to a cargo ship by a steel cradle designed to protect the fragile timbers and since then a team of volunteers has worked to clean out and repair the hull, relying on donations, sponsorship, paid guided tours and merchandise sales to fund the ongoing restoration.  At the end of November 2019 the vessel made a short trip on a barge from its temporary dock to a new permanent location at Port Adelaide.