Ship has shaky financial future
By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Staff Writer
Hawai'i's historic, square-rigged museum ship, the Falls of Clyde, will need major repairs and regular maintenance if the vessel is to survive into the next generation, according to a team carrying out a $600,000 renovation of the 129-year-old ship.
Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser
"The Falls of Clyde is in no danger of sinking today or tomorrow," said Terry White, volunteer project adviser. "But in cleaning the tanks, we've found bulkheads that have to be fixed or replaced."
The museum ship the Falls of Clyde has rotting bulkheads but not enough money to cover the cost for repairs. The 129-year-old vessel is undergoing a $600,000 renovation — and more needs to be done.
Michael Chinaka, chief financial officer of the Bishop Museum, told the workers to go ahead with the money available — a $300,000 gift from the late Robert Pfeiffer, with a matching $300,000 grant from the National Park Service program called Save America's Treasures.
Pfeiffer, who was CEO of Alexander & Baldwin Inc., also established an endowment for the Falls of Clyde that has grown to between $300,000 and $400,000. The income from the endowment comes to about $25,000 annually.
However, there is no money available to cover major additional costs — particularly the rotting bulkheads — expected to run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
White, who was chief of maintenance for the Independence and Constitution cruise ships, said a ship is like a house — it falls into disrepair if not maintained, and repairs are more expensive the longer they're neglected. The work now being done on the ship is the first in about two decades, and the ship was last in dry dock in 1981.
Already, one worker, Jose Ferrara of Consolidated Painting, has collected 20 50-gallon drums of rust from one of the tanks.
The ship will need major funding over the next few years to stabilize the hull and deal with other problems that have developed in the rigging and decks, White said. Once the most severe disintegration has been stabilized, a maintenance program can gradually make improvements.
The group has discussed ways to cut the cost of repairs, and other alternatives. Dorian Travers, senior adviser for the renovation, said the famous clipper ship Cutty Sark, a museum ship in England, has been set in concrete.
The Falls of Clyde is considered a premier museum ship because she is intact from her sailing days and because of her unique connection with Hawai'i. Few cities have a ship that is part of the community's history.
Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser
Falls of Clyde is a member of the original Matson fleet. The vessel sailed from Hilo, Hawai'i, and Honolulu for 20 years, and local people have sailed in her as passengers. The ship hauled groceries and passengers to Hilo and sugar back to California from 1899 to 1908, then was transformed into a sail-driven oil tanker when Hawai'i's sugar mills converted from coal burning to oil for fuel to run the machinery.
Donald Bell, an assistant curator at the Hawaii Maritime Center, checks out the rusted bow on the museum ship the Falls of Clyde. The square-rigged ship is the last member of the original Matson fleet.
During the plague epidemic of 1900, when the port of Honolulu was under quarantine, Falls of Clyde kept Hilo supplied from California.
The Falls of Clyde was built in 1878 at Glasgow, Scotland, on the River Clyde at about the same time as 'Iolani Palace. The ship has circumnavigated the globe six times, has rounded Cape Horn 12 times, made 11 voyages to India and has crossed the Pacific Ocean 11 times, all under sail. The vessel has made 324 blue-water voyages under sail. It has no engine.
She is the last four-masted, square-rigged ship, the last member of the original Matson fleet and the last sail-driven oil tanker afloat. The ship has been designated a National Historic Landmark.
The people of Honolulu saved her from being sunk as a breakwater in 1963 with an impromptu, one-month fund drive that raised $38,000. She was restored five years later by the Bishop Museum at a cost of $250,000. In 1980, the Falls sailed into a financial storm when the director of Bishop Museum announced his intention to sell the ship because the museum could not afford its upkeep.
Hawai'i's congressional delegation sponsored an appropriation that kept the ship afloat until a volunteer group stepped up. Former state Sen. Kenneth Brown, Amfac CEO Henry Walker and Alexander & Baldwin CEO Robert Pfeiffer took over the ship in conjunction with founding the Hawaii Maritime Center in 1982.
It was Pfeiffer's opinion that a state surrounded by water and dependent on the ocean for its survival must have a museum ship and an active maritime museum to preserve its seafaring heritage, or lose its self-respect.
Today's Bishop Museum administrators are sympathetic to refurbishing the ship but say it's a question of priorities.
"I think it's an important thing, but the museum can't take hundreds of thousands of dollars from other programs," said Bill Brown, museum president.
Bob Krauss is a founding member of the Hawaii Maritime Center. Reach him at 525-8073.
