Enthusiasts launch plan to rescue Cutty Sark's doomed sister ship

A bid to save Britain's oldest surviving clipper from destruction has been launched by a small group of maritime history experts and enthusiasts.

A bid to save Britain's oldest surviving clipper from destruction has been launched by a small group of maritime history experts and enthusiasts.

The Carrick, built in 1864 from teak and iron, once broke world speed records carrying affluent Victorian émigrés to south Australia. It now faces demolition because its owners, the Scottish Maritime Museum, have been unable to raise money to preserve its weather-beaten hull or pay the rent for its slipway.

The museum, based at Irvine on the Clyde, has been forced to apply to North Ayrshire Council, the local authority, for consent to demolish the Grade I listed vessel. Along with its younger sister ship, the Cutty Sark, it is one of only two ships with the highest level of protection in Britain.

The museum's proposal has provoked an international outcry, led by descendants of the vessel's original commander and co-owner, David Bruce, and of its first passengers in Australia, putting the council under intense pressure to reject the demolition application.

The council's planning department has received nearly 100 written objections from members of the Scottish parliament, British maritime societies, a retired rear admiral and enthusiasts in the United States, Canada and Sweden.

After reading about its plight in The Independent, a small group of enthusiasts based in London, and supported by the Scottish museum, is to mount a bid to buy and restore the vessel, known to maritime historians by its original name, The City of Adelaide.

The group, which includes Fred Walker, former chief naval architect at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, south London, plans to restore the vessel to its original state. It would then be relaunched as a floating museum to rival its sister ship, the Cutty Sark, or as a charter vessel.

Nigel Calvert, a City-based arts and entertainments lawyer who is co-ordinating the bid, said they needed to raise £50,000 for a feasibility study on the prospects for rebuilding the vessel, raising the necessary finance and its commercial potential.

If the bid is viable, Mr Calvert expects to get financial support from showbusiness "household names". Early estimates put the costs of rebuilding The Carrick's hull, decking, cabins and rigging to museum standardat about £5m. Equipping it as a sea-worthy vessel would, it is thought, cost up to £15m.

Mr Walker helped salvage The Carrick, after it sank on the Clyde in 1989, for the Scottish Maritime Museum. He said the 195ft-long ship is the only surviving example of a "composite" wooden clipper built around iron ribs, with copper sheathing the hull under the water line.