National maritime museum grant for
tuna industry icon Tacoma
They say that Port Lincoln’s Tacoma always survived through sheer adaptability and today is no
different. As the city considers the tightening of international tuna fishing quotas, the old clipper
is back in the spotlight as an historic icon.
The Australian National Maritime Museum recently announced a grant to fund the digitisation of
historic material associated with the city’s most famous tuna clipper.
“Tacoma is significant because it established the South Australian tuna fishing industry,” said the
Australian National Maritime Museum’s curator David Payne, “but also because it reflects the
ingenuity and perseverance of boat builders during that time.”
From founding vessel of South Australia’s tuna fishing industry to historic icon, Tacoma has always
moved with the times.
Starting out as a purse seine (net) fishing boat in 1952, it was Tacoma’s transformation to tuna
pole fishing that facilitated catch sizes large enough to support an onshore cannery and the
beginning of a viable industry in Port Lincoln.
However, a decline in tuna fishing numbers around 1967 prompted the owners to convert the
vessel to prawn fishing. Several more refits followed and in 1975 Tacoma became the first vessel in
South Australia to undertake processing on board.
Overcoming local obstacles such as a lack of materials, the brothers Bill, Alan and Hugh Haldane
built the 26.5 metre clipper from blue gum logs felled in the Ottway forest of south-western
Victoria. On the underside, they used Australian Jarrah.
The brothers took a design from the Western Boatbuilding Company that was based on a boat
called the Western Flyer, made famous in John Steinbeck’s book ‘The Log from the Sea of Cortez’.
After its retirement in 2003, the clipper was taken over by the Tacoma Preservation Society where
it is currently being restored for charter work.
The grant of $3500, funded by the Maritime Museums of Australia Project Support Scheme
(MMAPPS) scheme, will go towards the digitization and archiving of 63 years of Tacoma’s written
and photographic history. The material currently sits in filing cabinets and plastic storage bins.
The MMAPPS scheme, which the museum funds with Australian Government’s Distributed
National Collection Program, helps regional museums, community groups and volunteers to
promote and protect Australian maritime heritage. For more information, phone (02) 9298 3777 or
Tacoma is already on the Australian National Maritime Museum’s Register of Historic Vessels.
03 November 2009
Media Australian National Maritime Museum Bill Richards (02) 9298 3645; 0418 403 472. Images and
interviews are available upon request from brichards@anmm.gov.au
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