When Beat of Hawaii first launched, we looked out over Honolulu Harbor from the Maritime Center’s rooftop deck and saw the Falls of Clyde below, proud, fragile, and clearly already fading. This week, the ship was towed twenty-five miles offshore and scuttled, closing a very long and historic chapter that began before Hawaii was even a U.S. territory and that quietly shadowed our site’s early years. The lead image we took, too, was before we became more adept at photography.
How Hawaii’s last tall ship began.
Launched in Scotland in 1878, Falls of Clyde was one of the famed Falls Line vessels, each named after a Scottish waterfall. She was built of wrought iron, stretched 266 feet, and once earned the top rating from Lloyd’s of London.
Purchased by Captain William Matson in 1898 for the sugar trade between Hawaii and San Francisco, she became the first four-masted iron ship to enter Honolulu flying the Hawaiian flag. After later conversion to an oil tanker, she gained historic distinction as the world’s only surviving four-masted, full-rigged ship and the oldest American tanker ever built.
By 1989, Falls of Clyde was designated a National Historic Landmark and served as the centerpiece of the Hawaii Maritime Center, where we first met her.
From optimism to decline.
Back in 2009, we wrote about the museum’s last days and the ship’s uncertain fate. There was still talk of restoration then, and a sense that public will might save her. Instead, fifteen years later, the reality proved far harsher…