The City of Hobart could relinquish ownership of a 140-year-old fishing boat after 26 years of mounting maintenance costs and dwindling expertise.
The Matilda, a wooden vessel built in Hobart in the late 1880s, has been moored at Constitution Dock since 1999, when the council took it on with big restoration plans including making the hull watertight.
Now, more than two decades later, officers are recommending the “much-loved feature of the Hobart waterfront” be handed to the Tasmanian Maritime Museum.
“Maintaining the Matilda is not considered core council business,” a report by council staff states.
“It is an important part of Tasmanian heritage that would be better maintained and made available to the public by people who have greater expertise and capacity to share this unique piece of history to the broader community.”
Under the proposal, the Maritime Museum would take ownership, while the Wooden Boat School at Franklin would carry out restoration.
Apprentice shipwrights would be employed to help breathe new life into one of Tasmania’s last surviving working craft from that era before retiring it to Constitution Dock.
The council says annual costs to ratepayers have reached $26,000 – including $16,000 in insurance alone. This year’s pontoon float replacement added another $49,250 to the bill.
The council last tried to offload the vessel in 2019 after years of patchy maintenance by building crews.
Port Arthur Historic Site, which originally transferred the boat in 1999 under strict conditions, declined to take it back.
One of those conditions was that the vessel stay in public ownership and that any future disposal be to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery or a maritime museum.
The Matilda worked for nearly a century – four decades hauling mail to Tasman Island Lighthouse, then fishing the Derwent Estuary until 1974.
If the deal goes ahead, the council will contribute $25,000 towards restoration costs.
