The historic vessel Falls of Clyde journeyed to its final undersea resting place on Wednesday, some 25 miles off Oʻahu's south shore.
HPR was at Aloha Tower just before daybreak as two tug boats hauled the last iron-hulled tanker out into Honolulu Harbor for its final journey to be scuttled.
The ship had been docked in Honolulu for decades, while a struggle to save it and turn it into a museum played out. Falls of Clyde had been declared a National Historic Landmark — and was then delisted last year when efforts to return it to Scotland failed.
At 5 a.m., a handful of people were dockside to witness the end of a long saga, including Bruce McEwan and maritime historian Don, both with the group the Friends of the Falls of Clyde.
“She was built in Port Glasgow, Scotland, in 1878, launched Dec. 12, 1878,” McEwan said. “The main connection with Hawaiʻi came in at the turn of the century when Captain (William) Matson bought her to sail between the West Coast and Hawaiʻi. And of course, that lasted only a fairly short period of time in terms of the life of the ship, because steam took over sail. And then she went the ownership to some oil companies and then ended up in Alaska as a bunker barge for the fishing fleet out of Ketchikan. And then everybody felt that her life ended there.”
“She was brought down to Seattle, thinking she was going to be a part of the breakwater in Vancouver, Canada. And ultimately, John Wright and Bob Krauss decided no, she belonged here and back here in Hawaiʻi, and she came back here in 1963. Restored initially in the '70s, turned over to Bishop Museum in the late '80s. And by this time, she had historical recognition, both for the state and on the national level, and was under the stewardship of Bishop Museum from about 1989 until the museum gave her up in 2008, and then that's when we stepped in."
Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation Deputy Director of Harbors Dre Kalili was on scene at the docks Wednesday to see the saga of the vessel come to an end. The ship would have turned 147 years old on Dec. 12.
“It's definitely an occasion with mixed emotions and thoughts," Kalili said Wednesday morning. "It's something that we felt needed to happen, given the deteriorating condition of the vessel.”
Since July, a contractor, the Florida-based firm Shipwright, had been working to reinforce the vessel to successfully remove it from the port.
With the vessel now out of the harbor, Kalili said that the next step is to assess the condition of the pier.
“It's been several decades since we've been able to access the pier where the vessel was formerly berthed,” she explained. “It’s actually in pretty bad shape. There's a wooden portion of the pier that has been condemned for many years."
She said the department will determine what improvements are necessary to resume active maritime operations at the pier.
Artifacts from the Falls of Clyde have been recovered and will be on display at the San Francisco Maritime Museum. Kalili said that they will also be installing a permanent display to memorialize the ship.
“There are mixed thoughts and emotions with this, but we really were focused on just keeping the port safe," she said. "It's incredibly important to our islands, to our state economy, but I think the important thing is in terms of preserving the history and memorializing this vessel that was here in our harbors and served our islands when it did.”
The location where the Falls of Clyde was sunk was chosen in collaboration with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Coast Guard.
Read more of HPR's past coverage of the Falls of Clyde here:
This story aired on The Conversation on Oct. 15, 2025. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Hannah Kaʻiulani Coburn adapted this story for the web.
