The world’s last iron four masted ship, Falls of Clyde, built in 1878, has a date for returning to Scotland for restoration, but desperately needs a funding campaign to take off in order for that to happen.
Save Falls of Clyde, a Glasgow-based non-profit group have a date of February 3 2019 for Sevenstar’s lift ship the Yacht Express to collect the
280 ft (85.3 m) ship from her long term berth in Hawaii and bring her home to Greenock not far from where she was built. She would then arrive back in Scotlant on March 28 2019.
The group are using the Australian restoration of the  James Craig to enthuse volunteers and donors to be able to achieve something similar in Scotland.

Falls of Clyde in her trading days

Organiser David O’Neill says: “We plan to rebuild her here and put her back to sea as the pride of Scotland, helping communities across the globe. We are looking for volunteers to join us, no matter what skill or interest you have talk to us about how you can play a part in saving her. I can be messaged on email via savefallsofclyde@gmail.com

A statement by the group outlines rebuilding the Falls for a sailing future so that she can act as a Campus Afloat, deliver Fairtrade Cargo, Sail Training, and collect oceanic plastic waste. Marine engineering students from Glasgow’s Strathclyde University are presently engaged in redesigning the ship as a carbon neutral exercise for her future role.

Save Falls of Clyde have set up a funding campaign – click HERE – but have a long way to go to reach their goal.
Falls of Clyde has been in Honolulu since 1963, where she has been a museum ship since 1968 as part of the Bishop Museum. She had carried the Hawaiian flag in her trading days (before the island became part of the USA) and was kept as a static exhibit rigged as a fully rigged ship. Declared a United States Historic Landmark in 1989 she has nevertheless been allowed to deteriorate and the Bishop Museum was persuaded to transfer ownership to the Friends of Falls of Clyde. In the interim many of her artefacts have been removed and so she is in need of a massive restoration with estimates into the tens of millions of pounds.
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Again, the crowd-funding site has been set up: HERE

In 2014 one of the last clipper ships – the City of Adelaide was shipped to Adelaide in a similar operation after local efforts to save her for restoration at Irvine, in Scotland, failed. The Australians demonstrated a great sense of pride, and energy, in restoring a ship like this – especially after the Australian Government approved the grant of A$850,000 for shipping.  More on City of Adelaide can be found:  HERE