12 facts you didn't know about the City of Adelaide clipper ship
YOU will have noticed lots of people getting very excited about the City of Adelaide. Here are twelve reasons why the old boat is more interesting than you thought.
A QUARTER of a million or so Australians can trace their ancestry back to the clipper ship the City of Adelaide that sailed between Britain and Adelaide between 1864 and 1887.
You probably know a little bit about the ship already.
That a group of Australians banded together with a bold plan to snaffle the ship away from the UK, despite strong resistance.
That the Australian group was successful, and the ship has now arrived in Adelaide.
And that its arrival in Adelaide seems to be really important to a lot of people.
So what's all the fuss about?
That quarter of a million figure
THE group behind the boat's return - Clipper Ship 'City of Adelaide' Limited - claim that around 250,000 Australians can trace their ancestry back to the 889 or so passengers who arrived in Adelaide on the ship.
That figure is a little hokey though. It includes assumptions that these passengers would have stayed in Australia and that the birth rates and times of the passengers' families were in line with state averages.
While the precision of this figure might be in question, the process for arriving at it is laid out nicely on the City of Adelaide website.
And without doubt many South Australians will recognise at least one name from the ship's passenger lists.
The dedication and tragedy of the Alston family
THE ship's master on its last eleven voyages to South Australia was Captain Edward Alston.
On all but two of those trips he was accompanied by his wife Grace.
Their son, Roland, was born on the journey to London in 1877, and died on the same route seven years later.
Captain Alston and his wife were lost at sea when another ship he was captaining went missing in 1890, as it carried coal from Liverpool to Peru, three years after his last City of Adelaide voyage.
The Lehmann connection
IN 1876, assisted migrants on board the Adelaide were of Germanic/Danish origin and included the ancestors of Australia's cricket captain Darren Lehmann (the Niesens).
Lehmann himself has been a supporter of the ship's return, endorsing the fundraising efforts.
The boat was fast (at least at the first)
WHEN the City of Adelaide came into service in 1864 it was lauded for its speed.
According to Peter Christopher, one of the directors of the preservation group, it cut the voyage between Australia and the UK by up to a month compared to other merchant vessels of the day.
In the 1880s however, rival iron-hulled vessels started to match the City of Adelaide's speed and could offer much larger freight and passenger capacities.
Just keep working
OVER its 23 years ferrying passengers and cargo to and from the motherland, the City of Adelaide was at sea for 4485 days, or around 200 days every year in operation.
For the mathematically inclined, yes, that means more days at sea than in dock.
On average, the journey to Australia - pushed along by the 'roaring forties' winds across the Indian Ocean - was a week or two shorter than the return trip.
I'm on a barge
THE City of Adelaide has just finished 'sailing' to South Australia from England.
By 'sailing' we mean sitting on a cargo ship being transported.
The boat is wrapped in a waterproof membrane to prevent further decay.
Its journey isn't over when it arrives in Port Adelaide though.
The ship's future is uncertain, with its ultimate resting place still to be determined.
Fletcher's Slip in Port Adelaide is the preferred site in the eyes of the group who have coordinated its return, but the ship's ultimate home will not be determined without the blessing of state and local governments or an answer to the delicate question of just who will pay.
One ship, three phases
THE City of Adelaide's history features three distinct periods of operation.
In the first eight years it was state-of-the-art and carried first and second class passengers.
The Advertiser couldn't hide its affection, calling it a "ship of which the colony may well be proud" in 1864.
In the mid-1870s as the ship's sheen began to fade and it began started carrying steerage class - hundreds of people accommodated on or below deck.
And in its final years the ship mainly carried cargo.
The mania, frustration and tragedy of 1874
IN 1874, the ship was filled to the brim with people.
About 280 passengers and 30 crew crammed in for the voyage, the passenger count bloated by hundreds of assisted migrants.
Assisted migrants were boat people attracted to Australia by incentives from the SA government, such as free passage.
Given the ship had only carried more than 100 people once before, the size of the passenger list was extraordinary.
At least seven people died on the voyage, most due to an outbreak of Scarlet Fever.
Peter Roberts, a history buff and one of the directors of the preservation group, claims 1874 to be his favourite of all the City of Adelaide's voyages.
"It is hard to imagine the equivalent number of passengers on a ship of the same hull dimensions as a Boeing 747 being on board for three months with all the livestock to be slaughters for food consumption during the voyage," he said.
After three months at sea the boat approached Port Adelaide, but an enormous storm grounded the City of Adelaide off the beach between Henley Beach and Semaphore.
The frustration of the passengers stranded so close to their destination was captured by a local paper:
"One or two passengers and their friends on shore recognised each other; but as messages could only be transmitted from the ship to shore, but not vice versa, no satisfactory communication could be had."
The ship was partly unloaded and refloated and soon entered Port Adelaide safely, but the effects of the storm were still to be felt.
"The same storm killed the husband of a woman on board the City of Adelaide who was migrating to join her husband," Mr Roberts recounted.
The Tilkas
ACCOMPANYING Darren Lehmann's ancestors on the 1876 voyage was the largest family to migrate on the City of Adelaide: the Tilkas. Martin, his wife Marie and their six children were accompanied by Martin's brother Mattheus, his wife Maria and their three children.
According to records the Tilkas lived in Riverton and then moved to Dublin, north of Adelaide.
Music battle
THE rivalry of two groups seeking to claim control the City of Adelaide, one based in the UK, one in Adelaide, escalated in 2010 to the point where both groups released songs to raise money for their efforts.
The local tune was penned by veteran folk musician Steve Foster.
The rivalry got nasty, too, with the Sunderland Echo reporting that the chairman of the UK group said Foster's song lacked the authenticity and experience of the Sunderland track and described it as overly sentimental.
Wool and copper on return
WHILE the City of Adelaide ferried mostly human cargo to Adelaide, the ship was stocked with the products of Australia's primary industries on its return to London.
This included copper from the Copper Coast and wool, much of it from Western Australia.
That explains the Los Angeles Clippers
THE American basketball team known as the LA Clippers is named after the clipper ship - the same type of ship as the City of Adelaide.
With three masts and a sleek hull, the clipper's reputation for speed presumably made it the leading sensible candidate to be the mascot of a basketball team. Presumably.
There's more from where that came
THE City of Adelaide is the flavour of the month for South Australia's nautical history, but the state is brimming with echoes of our maritime past.
The One and All is based on an 1850s, two-masted ship, but was built in the 1980s and is currently owned by the Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure.
Its previous operator went into administration in 2011, though it has recently found a commercial operator that hopes to use it to train spiring sailors.
That deal is yet to be finalised, with the department still reviewing terms of the agreement.
Another ship owned by the State Government is the Falie, a two-masted sailing ship built in the first half of the 20th century.
In response to an enquiry from The Advertiser, a Transport Department spokesperson confirmed that taxpayers are up for a budgeted cost of $590,000 to cover insurance and maintenance of these vessels each year, but that there is no intention to sell the ships.
The fate of a replica of the early 19th century ship HMS Buffalo is up in the air, with the owner, a Glenelg restaranteur, still seeking a buyer as of late last year.
Follow Jackson on Twitter: @jacksongs
Please note: Historical references, dates and numbers in this article have been collated from a number of sources and reflect our best understanding of the City of Adelaide's past. Tweet us @theTiser if you have new information.