SHE was due to be scuttled last week, plunged to the depths of the seas she has plied for 130 years.
For months the Falls of Clyde, one of just five surviving Scottish-built Tall Ships, has lain in her Hawaii berth under a death sentence.
Yesterday, campaigners won a stay of execution.
"This is her eleventh hour," said Honolulu-based Heather
MacGregor, of Save The Falls of Clyde. "When she is old and dignified the moral thing to do is honour her, respect and care for her, not throw her away."
MacGregor and her colleagues, many from the 150-strong Caledonian Society of Hawaii, have secured a preliminary agreement to buy the ship from its current owners, the Bishop Museum in Honolulu. Now it is up to the museum's board to finalise the deal later this month.
Originally, the museum said it needed $30m (£16.9m) to restore the ship. However, it may change hands for nothing with the cost of keeping it in dry dock having to be met by campaigners.
"There has been a huge groundswell of enthusiasm for her," MacGregor said. "We are receiving emails on our petition to save her from around the world."
The Falls is part of Scottish and Hawaiian history. She was built in 1878 by Russells of Port Glasgow and is a 'cousin' of the Glenlee, Glasgow's 'Tall Ship'.
She circumnavigated the world under the power of her four masts before finding herself in the Pacific, flying the flag of the once independent Hawaii and acting as the tiny island state's only lifeline with the west coast of America. It was a link that many believe helped pave the way for Hawaii to become American in 1899.
The Falls is a US National Landmark, the equivalent of an A-listed building in the UK. She is also a major physical landmark in the harbour of Honolulu, but not the proud symbol she once was.
The Bishop Museum, despairing at the cost of her upkeep, has stripped the vessel. She is, MacGregor said, "an appallingly sad and depressive sight", adding: "Her history dictates that she can't face the moral indignity of being scuttled."
The campaign plans to take ownership of the ship and put her in a dry dock, at least at first, for repairs. Campaigners know they have a tough task ahead of them.
Bruce McEwan, the Honolulu-based "chieftain" of the Caledonian Society of Hawaii and the man leading the drive to save the Falls said: "We still have work to do, but we are optimistic at this time that we will be successful."
The Bishop Museum first threatened to sink The Falls in April unless it raised $30m by last week. Amid frantic negotiations that deadline passed with a preliminary deal for the campaigners to take ownership of the vessel.
Sixty-two-year-old McEwan, an executive of a tug company on the island of Oahu and the great-grandson of a migrant from Airdrie, Lanarkshire, is now increasingly confident that he and his team can secure the ship's long-term future.
He said: "We have to get over one final hurdle of the board of directors and the change of ownership. I am hoping that will just be a formality."
The ship has come to represent the remarkable links between Scotland and Hawaii.
Tens of thousands of Hawaiians can trace at least some of their ancestry to Scotland. Scots, including missionaries and Victorian Pacific traders, played a huge role in the islands' development. Robert Louis Stevenson was just one 19th-century visitor. He befriended the last crown princess of the islands, Victoria Ka'iulani. Princess Ka'iulani's father, Archibald Scott Cleghorn, like Stevenson, was from Edinburgh.
"Scots came before and after Hawaii became part of America," McEwan explained. "There was a huge wave of Scottish immigration between about 1880 and 1930."
Another two Scottish historic tall ships have been given safe haven in America. The Balclutha, used for the Hollywood blockbuster Mutiny On The Bounty is berthed at San Francisco. The steel-hulled Moshulu lies in Philadelphia harbour.
The full article contains 689 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
