The Falls of Clyde, a nearly 150-year-old vessel long docked at Honolulu Harbor, has been sent to its final resting place.
At sunrise on Wednesday, the ship was towed from its berth at Pier 7. By noon, it had been disposed of at sea, at a site about 25 miles south of the harbor, the state Department of Transportation said in an announcement.
The ship had been docked at Honolulu Harbor since 2008. DOT said this summer that the Falls of Clyde was impounded in 2016 after its permit was revoked and the owner failed to remove it from the harbor.
The department sought bids for its permanent removal from the harbor in July 2024 and in July 2025, Shipwright LLC, a Florida-based maritime technical consulting firm, was awarded a contract to do just that. At that time, the removal project was estimated to cost about $4.9 million.
DOT spokesperson Russell Pang told Aloha State Daily in an email Thursday that in July, the department estimated the removal timeframe would be late November, but Shipwright "was able to complete the remediation work and secure all required approvals from the U.S. Coast Guard and Environmental Protection Agency ahead of schedule."
The Friends of Falls of Clyde held a send-off ceremony on Tuesday and the DOT says it continues to work with the group to "memorialize the vessel in a permanent display that will feature key artifacts including the vessel’s name board, wheel and bell."
Other artifacts that were removed from Falls of Clyde have been transferred to the National Park Service and will be displayed at the San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park, according to the DOT. The department noted, too, that some of ship's rigging tools will be used for the maintenance of Balclutha, a three-masted square-rigged Scottish-built ship moored there.
According to the National Park Service, Falls of Clyde was built in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1878 and made "several trading voyages to western U.S. ports before being sold to American owners in 1898."
"The vessel was subsequently involved in the Hawaiian transpacific sugar trade as part of Capt. William Matson’s Matson Navigation Co. fleet," the NPS noted. It was the oldest surviving vessel from the Matson fleet.
In the early 1900s, the ship was modified as a "sailing oil tanker for the maritime petroleum trade," and made multiple trips between California and Hawai‘i every year, the NPS says. In 1922, it was converted for use as a fuel barge in Ketchikan, Alaska.
"In 1958, a private owner bought the Clyde, towed it to Seattle, and tried to find a city that [would] adopt it. Bob Krauss, a columnist for 'The Honolulu Advertiser' and Hawai‘i philanthropists launched a grassroots effort to save the ship, raising $35,000," a timeline on the Historic Hawai‘i Foundation website notes. "By 1963, the ship was a fixture on the Honolulu waterfront, undergoing $3 million worth of restoration over 34 years."
When it was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1989, the ship was the "oldest surviving American tanker and the only surviving sailing oil tanker left afloat in the world," according to the NPS. It was removed from the National Register of Historic Places and had its designation as a National Historic Landmark withdrawn in 2024.
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Stephanie Salmons can be reached at stephanie@alohastatedaily.com.
