The City of Adelaide is an 1864 clipper ship moored in the inner harbour at Port Adelaide, the oldest surviving composite-built clipper in the world and now a registered museum ship. Built in Sunderland, England, she made 23 voyages between Britain and South Australia, carrying emigrants and cargo on the three-month passage around the Cape of Good Hope. After her commercial life ended she served variously as a hospital ship, a yacht club, and finally a hulk before an extraordinary restoration campaign brought her back to Port Adelaide.
The ship is open for tours on weekends, and the restoration work underway is visible — an ongoing project rather than a finished museum. Walking her decks gives a visceral sense of the conditions emigrants endured: the ship is 60 metres long and would have carried up to 400 passengers in three classes, with steerage passengers living in the space now used for cargo storage.