Sale hope for Cartela
Shipshape suitors flag interest in ferry
HOBART’S charming and long-loved steamship Cartela has garnered “serious” interest from admirers and potential buyers since being listed for sale online several months ago.
George Rance, chairman of the board of trustees overseeing the maintenance and restoration of the rare river steamer, said inquiries from local and interstate buyers would be worked through in coming weeks.
The ship is the last of her kind, built the same year as the Titanic in 1912, and has operated in Tasmanian waters for more than a century.
She carried cargo, served the Royal Australian Navy in WWI, ferried passengers when the Tasman Bridge collapsed in 1975, and has played host to weddings, parties and school excursions.
The Cartela was moved to Franklin in 2014 for restoration and maintenance.
The trust is asking for $250,000 from an investor or tourism operator to take the “very significant” boat, but a multimillion-dollar restoration is still required to see her sail again.
Mr Rance said the restoration was a “shovel ready” project with numerous studies and plans already undertaken and some work already under way. A condition report, heritage and historical value study, cost-benefit study and economic, financial viability study and shipwright report had all been done.
The original steam engine, which was removed by 1958, also had been recovered and mostly restored. The trust had initially hoped to raise the funds needed to restore Cartela through private, community and government funding. But Mr Rance said options had disappeared: “Drought, the bushfires and now COVID-19 have meant that getting funding and philanthropic support is very awkward.”
Mr Rance said he hoped a “tourism operator or other group” that understood the commercial potential of the Cartela and the training and skills development opportunity would buy the boat.
“It is a great icon, and the tourism potential to have a steam ferry operating out of Hobart is fantastic.
“The financial study we had done on very conservative figures absolutely proves that.”