A Cape Town District Six Museum tagged image from photographer – wallyg as published on Flickr.
O’ahu – Honolulu – Honolulu Harbor: Falls of Clyde
Image by wallyg
Falls of Clyde is the last surviving iron-hulled, four-masted full rigged ship, and the only remaining sail-driven oil tanker. Built in 1878 by Russell and Company in Port Glasgow, Inverclyde, Scotland, Falls of Clyde was launched as the first of nine ships for Wright and Breakenridge’s Falls Line. She measures 280-feet in length, with a 40-foor bream and a 21-foot draft, and is built to carried 1807 gross tons. She is currently berthed at Pier 7 in Honolulu Harobr, operating as a museum ship.
Named after a group of waterfulls up the River Clyde, her maiden voyage took her to Karachi, now in Pakistan, and her first six years were spent engaged in the India trade. She then became a tramp pursuing general cargo such as lumber, jute, cement, and wheat from ports in Australia, California, India, New Zealand, and the British Isles. After 21 years as a British merchantmen, Falls of Clyde was purchased fby Captain William Matson of the Matson Navigation Company, taken to Honolulu in 1899, and registered under the Hawaiian flag. From 1899 to 1907, she made over sixty voyages between Hilo, Hawaii, and San Francisco, California, carrying general merchandise west, sugar east, and passengers both ways.
In 1907, the Associated Oil Company (later Tidewater Oil) bought Falls of Clyde and converted her to a bulk oil tanker with a capacity of 19,000 barrels, and she would bring kerosene to Hawaii returning to California with molasses for cattle feed. In 1927, she was sold to the General Petroleum Company, her masts cut down, and converted into a floating fuel depot in Alaska. In 1959 she was purchased by William Mitchell, who intended to but failed to sell her to a preservation group. In 1963, the bank holding the mortgage on Falls of Clyde decided to sell her to be suk as part of a breakwater off Vancouver, but she was bought by Karl Kortum, director of the San Francisco Maritime Museum, and Fred Klebingat, who took her under tow to Honolulu. She was given to the Bishop Museum and opened to public in 1968, and in 1970 she was restored as a full-rigged ship. After years of controversial potential neglect, she was transferred in 2008 to the non-profit group, Friends of Falls of Clyde, for restoration.
National Register #73000659 (1973)
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