Queen of Adelaide, the last clipper

[crabfoot]

There was a bloke on the Antiques Roadshow tonight who had a couple of pillars from HMS Victory, removed in the 1930s - then a pointed reference to Adelaide (Grynge) made me think -

When the Cutty Sark caught fire, it was pointed out that the last and most complete remaining clipper, the Queen of Adelaide, was languishing in a port in Scotland for want of money to restore her and pay the harbour dues.

Now, I've just searched for "Queen of Adelaide" and "Queen of Adelaide" clipper, and all I find are references in reports of the Cutty Sark fire.

Whilst I think it sad that the ship is languishing unrestored, I find it even sadder that she is yesterday's news. When the Cutty Sark business was going on, one could find pics and comments about the Queen of Adelaide on the web. Now, I find zilch, doodly, and I am unable to find a reference in Wikipedia.

Why do those search engine people call their tools "search engines" when they find nothing?

[grynge]

There is a group here in Adelaide raising money to save the "City of Adelaide" and bring it to South Australia. Yeah I am not sure about google since it's local update things have tended to be a bit out of whack. I tend to do a double dip google/bing (I used to do a triple with yahoo/msn-live/google) to see which one is more relevant. I find if its a big tourist destination google tends to flavour all those big hotel/travel sites and bing tends to be a bit more eclectic in its results.

[Clinton]

Why do those search engine people call their tools "search engines" when they find nothing?

Not all search engines are rubbish. Try Bing It's certainly giving me more relevant results on the home page with the first few links going to Wikipedia, this page and others.

Bing is less biased towards big business sites that have a large PPC spend.

[Kay]

Thanks for the heads up on the "City of Adelaide". This story will make a great article for my expat site, and perhaps give them a bit of extra publicity.

[grynge]

Kay I would love to read your article when you post it, when I first heard about the city of adelaide I donated way back then and would love for my kids to visit it when its restored.

[crabfoot]

Now I have been corrected about the name, I can find lots of references!

So here's a comment about the City of Adelaide site -

There's a poem on the website, written by Joe Earl,
Who as a boy trained on the Indefatigable.
This rambling in verse is definitely no pearl
Methinks he is descended from McGonagall

[Clinton]

Just to you know, this page is now on the first page of the Gorg (here) for "Queen of Adelaide"...and rising up that page. Talk about bad results! Anyway, since other searchers may be arriving on this page through the SERPs feel free to post relevant links/info to help them.

[grynge]

The "Queen of Adelaide" is Queen Elizabeth II same as you guys lol. If memory serves me there was also a Queen Adelaide some time ago.

[crabfoot]

Queen Adelaide? Erm yes, that's why you live in a city called Adelaide, with a King William Street up the middle -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adelaide_of_Saxe-Meiningen
But Queen Elizabeth is only Queen Elizabeth II in England and Wales, although the matter is not discussed much. Think about it - the first Queen Elizabeth did not know about Australia. She was also very inconsiderate towards her Scottish relations.
The Scots Jacobites took the throne of England after she died, so to the Scottish nation the present Queen is the first Queen Elizabeth of Scotland. There were a couple of very nasty incidents in the 50s, when the Post Office installed post boxes in Scotland marked E II R, and they spontaneously exploded! The Post Office took the hint, and most Scottish post boxes are now marked Royal Mail without an attribution to the monarch. Reliability tests have shown that these do not explode spontaneously ...

Anyway, the City of Adelaide is not quite the last clipper, because there's still the Star of India to consider, and that is very much a goer - but it is not a composite, it is made of iron. The City of Adelaide is the last and most original "composite" clipper, ie wood hull on an iron frame. Apart from the Cutty Sark, there's only the skeleton of the Ambassador still in existence, stranded on a beach in the Straits of Magellan - don't look bad but the iron is rotten. That's it for clippers, but how much of the past do we need? Schooners were really the ultimate "sail" vessels. There was one which was used as a floating brewery off the Alaskan coast during prohibition - they called it the schooner of beer!