The Glenlee is a classic example of the last age of sail when metal-hulled sailing ships were used on long haul routes as bulk carriers.
245 feet in length and 1613 tons, she was one of a group
of 10 steel sailing vessels built for the Glasgow shipping firm of
Archibald Sterling & Co. in Port Glasgow at the yard of
Anderson Rodger & Company. She was launched in 1896. She
circumnavigated the world four times in her merchanting career and
went fifteen times round Cape Horn.
In 1922 she was bought by the Spanish navy, renamed Galatea and
became a sail training vessel until 1969. After a few more years as
a shore-based training school until 1981 she was laid up and
abandoned in Seville Harbour. Spotted by a naval architect in
1990 she was bought at auction and returned to the Clyde where she
has undergone extensive conservation by the staff and volunteers of
the Clyde Maritime Trust who operate her as a museum. A visit
will shed light on what it was like to live and sail in her,
her design and her working lives. The Glenlee is now listed on the
UK Register of Historic Vessels and is identified as one of 50 or
so nationally pre-eminent historic ships in the UK. In May
2011 the ship was moved alongside the new Riverside Museum.
Also at Queen's Dock and Yorkhill Quay (Back to listings