Ship (4m).
L/B/D:
280 × 40 × 21 (85.3m × 12.2m × 6.4m). Tons:
1,809 grt. Hull:
iron. Built:
Russell & Co., Port Glasgow, Scotland; 1878.
The first of six four-masted ships built for Wright and Breakenridge's Falls Line, Falls of Clyde was built for general worldwide trade. Her maiden voyage took her to Karachi, and her subsequent voyaging took her to Australia, California, India, New Zealand, and the British Isles. After twenty-one years under the British flag, she was purchased by Captain William Matson. Falls of Clyde sailed briefly under the Hawaiian flag. When Hawaii was annexed by the United States in 1900, it took a special act of Congress to secure the foreign-built ship the right to fly the American flag. Rigged down as a bark and given passenger accommodations, Falls of Clyde carried general merchandise from San Francisco and sugar from Honolulu.
In 1907, the Anglo-American Oil Company bought Falls of Clyde and converted her to a bulk tanker with a capacity of 19,000 barrels. In this configuration she sailed from Santa Barbara with kerosene and returned from Hawaii with bulk molasses. Following World War I, she sailed to Denmark, and in 1921 she made her last voyage under sail, to Brazil. Rigged down, in 1925 she was purchased by the General Petroleum Company and began life as an oil barge at Ketchikan Harbor, Alaska. There she remained until 1959 when she was sold to William Mitchell, who intended to make her an attraction vessel at Seattle. This plan fell through and subsequent efforts by Karl Kortum, director of the San Francisco Maritime Museum, and Fred Klebingat, who had sailed in her as chief mate in 1915, to place her in Long Beach and Los Angeles were similarly disappointed.
In 1963, the bank holding the mortgage on Falls of Clyde decided to sell her to be sunk as part of a breakwater at Vancouver, British Columbia. At the last minute, Kortum and Klebingat aroused interest in the ship in Hawaii, whose flag she had once flown. Funds were raised to pay for the ship and her transfer to Honolulu where she was put under the auspices of the Bernice P. Bishop Museum and opened to the public in 1968. Her restoration as a full-rigged ship was assisted by the grandson of the original builder, Sir William Lithgow, whose Glasgow shipyard donated masts and other fittings.
Heine, Historic Ships of the World. Klebingat, "Falls of Clyde."
