The City of Adelaide clipper ship is the oldest composite clipper ship in the world, one of only two surviving ships, along with the famed Cutty Sark at the British Maritime Museum. The City of Adelaide clipper, named after South Australia's capital, was built in 1864 to carry passengers and cargo between South Australia and England. For 23 years the City of Adelaide brought large numbers of British and German migrants to the fledgling colony. Today approximately a quarter of a million South Australians, or one in five, can trace an ancestor that migrated, or was a passenger, on the City of Adelaide.
In 1992 she was deemed part of the UK National Historic Ships Core Collection, the only 19th century sailing ship in the United Kingdom capable of floating.
For the last few years the City of Adelaide ship has been languishing at the slipway at Irving, the responsibility of the Scottish Maritime Museum. She is now in peril, in imminent danger of being demolished.
The South Australian organisation Clipper Ship 'City of Adelaide' Ltd is working to save the City of Adelaide from demolition and return her to Port Adelaide in time for the state's 175th Jubilee in 2011. She would be displayed with the local ships Falie and Nelcebee. The Nelcebee is an 1883 tug lighter which assist the City of Adelaide load wool and copper at Port Augusta in the 1880s for the London markets. One of the City of Adelaide owners was Henry Martin proprietor of the Blinman copper mines in the Flinders Ranges. The ship has links all over South Australia.
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