The Falls of Clyde International (FOCI) team first started in 2016; all because of a plea for help on a maritime facebook page. David O’Neill (the creator and director of FOCI) saw and answered this plea which was simple: Save the Falls of Clyde (FOC) from being ‘scuttled’ by the Honolulu harbours department.

Based in Glasgow, Scotland (only 12 miles from where she was originally build 142 years ago), we are truly an international team with volunteers all around the world including Australia, mainland USA, Hawaii and across Europe. Before long we attracted like-minded people, all sharing the same vision as us; to both save the FOC and to get her sailing again, promoting ‘Clydebuilt’ engineering and her new ‘Clean Tech’ propulsion and energy storage systems. She will operate on a commercial basis, while helping communities around the world grow and thrive.

We didn’t just want the FOC becoming another ‘static’ museum. Instead we have created plans which encompassed everything everyone at FOCI passionately about – the environment, climate change, technology, social causes and heritage: bringing them all together into one ambitious project.

After extensive research of other vessels of similar stature and age (such as the James Craig and the Glenlee), working with and building relationships with various tech companies and global maritime organisations and considering the biggest social and environmental problems facing communities around the world, we were able to produce five distinct ‘operations’ that could be run on the ship and onshore – all broken down six distinct ‘sub projects’, details of which can be found on the ‘our plan’ page.