National Maritime Museum Grant For Tuna Industry Icon Tacoma

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3rd November 2009, 02:34pm - Views: 1253





People Feature Australian National Maritime Museum 1 image

People Feature Australian National Maritime Museum 2 image






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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