Volunteers are needed to sand, chip paint and work on the deck of the historic sailing ship Falls of Clyde before it is moved from Honolulu Harbor to a Barbers Point dry dock next month.

Ian Jeffrey Lansdown, owner of Wikoliana Educational Excursions and one of the coordinators of the volunteer effort, said more than a dozen people turned out for yesterday's session, when work crews sanded and prepared the ship's railings to be re-varnished and also constructed new fencing for the bow of the ship.

Lansdown said more volunteers are needed Saturday when work parties again meet at Pier 7, where the only surviving iron-hulled, four-masted full-rigged ship is berthed. The 130-year-old Falls of Clyde is also the only sail-driven oil tanker left in the world.

“;We'll keep working until the ship is dry docked,”; Lansdown added. “;We need carpenters and we would like volunteers to bring their own tools and supplies.”;

Immediate plans, Lansdown said, call for creating new signs and clearing the deck areas so the volunteers have more room to work.

The Falls of Clyde was a part of the Hawaii Maritime Center near the Aloha Tower from 1988 to 2007. The vessel was closed in January 2007 when it was deemed unsafe.

It was sold to the Friends of Falls of Clyde in September.

    Falls of Clyde restoration begins

   

 

A ship that once sailed is on its way to being restored.

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The vessel, named after Scottish waterfalls, was launched on Dec. 12, 1878, at Port Glasgow, Scotland. The vessel was sold to Capt. William Matson and arrived in the islands in January 1898. It carried sugar from Hilo to San Francisco until 1906, when the Associated Oil Co., in which Matson had an interest, bought the ship and converted it to an oil tanker in 1907.

The vessel was destined to become part of a breakwater until the late Honolulu Advertiser columnist Bob Krauss started a campaign that led to its restoration by the Bishop Museum. It opened to the public at Pier 5 in 1971.

Damaged by Hurricane Iwa in 1982, the vessel was moved to Pier 7 and again restored by Friends of Falls of Clyde, which reopened it to the public in 1988. The Bishop Museum in 1996 regained responsibility for the maintenance and restoration of the Falls of Clyde.