New Funding for Glasgow tall ship

Glasgow's Tall Ship Glenlee is entering smoother waters after a £1.8million boost has helped to secure her future. The National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) boost through its Covid-19 Response Fund will help to keep the icon of the River Clyde afloat and secure its future for years to come.

The funding grant comes as the 126-year-old vessel celebrates 30 years back in Glasgow and will support essential inspections and repairs needed to help ensure the ship remains a landmark of cultural importance for the city for another three decades, and beyond.

Built on the River Clyde at the Bay Yard in Port Glasgow by Anderson Rodger and Co in 1896, the Glenlee is one of five Clydebuilt steel sailing ships still afloat.

She is now the only one in the UK, and this year celebrates 30 years on the River Clyde.

Made of steel manufactured or rolled locally in Lanarkshire, it took about six months to complete the ship, using the skills of many different tradesmen, who were masters in the building of a wind-driven cargo ship, built to carry large loads cheaply over long distances.

Under later owners, she was named Islamount and Clarastella, but her history is a little hazy when she was under Italian ownership.

She then went on to become became a sail training icon of the Spanish Navy, Galatea, but had been languishing for decades and was in poor shape from the glory days of her launch.

 She was abandoned in Seville and stripped of her brass work and damaged by fire, masts and yards lowered. It was in 1993 that Clyde Maritime Trust founder and trustee Hamish Hardie MBE, an Olympian yachtsman, began a mission to save her and bring her home.

The trust managed to get £40,000 together and paid the sum of money she was worth as scrap.

Mr Hardie, who competed for Great Britain in sailing in 1948, was on the voyage which brought her home with the help of support tug Wallasey. She finally returned to the Clyde in June 1993 for the first time, 97 years after her launch.

The only surviving example of its kind in the UK, the ship is of great historical importance. It circumnavigated the globe five times, sailed the seas carrying cargo in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The Tall Ship Glenlee provides a unique space for learning, heritage, enjoyment and community engagement by sharing stories of the people and places involved in the vessel’s rich history.