MERSEYSIDE’S highest profile ship restoration project on the Daniel Adamson has had its £2.8m Lottery bid rejected in a shock national decision.
Heritage Lottery Fund trustees in London threw out the application by the Daniel Adamson Preservation Society (DAPS) for restoration of the UK’s last steam-powered, coal-fired tug tender.
This was in spite of a two-year, £74,372 grant-aided development process guided by Heritage Lottery Fund North West to ensure all issues were fully addressed.
DAPS submitted 1,165 pages of documents about the entire project to the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) trustees as advised.
But HLF boss Carole Souter said it is unable to support the project to bring the 1903 Birkenhead-built ship to full public operational use, as it is “not fully developed”.
Earlier this year, HLF donations totalled £23m to help restore the burned-out static tea clipper Cutty Sark at Greenwich, London.
In 2008, HLF gave £21m to the wrecked Tudor warship Mary Rose, in Portsmouth.
National Historic Ships Register director Martyn Heighton, on a recent visit to SS Daniel Adamson, at Sandon Dock, Bootle, hailed it as “one of the most important maritime projects in the UK”.
