Rhyl, The Story Of The City of Ottawa Boat That Now Lies A Ruins!

Apparently, when they were going to do the harbor the council was considering excavating the remaining parts of the boat but it never happened. see https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-north-east-wales-14062144

There is very little history of the vessel, although some books have been written, but I managed to find this.

City of Ottawa

The remains of this vessel lie on a mud bank in Rhyl's Foryd Harbour.

  The City of Ottawa was built as a three-masted vessel with square rigging in 1860 in Quebec, Canada, by Jean Elie Gingras. The ship was named the City of Ottawa to celebrate Queen Victoria's choice of a new Canadian capital just three years earlier. 

The City of Ottawa traded to various English ports and Australia, Asia, South America, the United States of America and Canada. 

The ship was brought to Rhyl in 1906 after being damaged in a storm and, soon afterward, was abandoned as uneconomic to salvage further.

In 1906 the City of Ottawa was sold to Robert Horton and Co, Salvage Merchants of Rhyl, for her timber and metals. 

They also bought iron and steel ships for breaking up like the Fearless in 1905. 

Apparently, they got into trouble for using explosives in order to salvage the metal. Like the City of Ottawa, the Fearless become stuck on a sandbank while being towed - much to the amazement of Rhyl's holidaymakers.

A painting by Judith Samuels [who has also written a book about the City of Ottawa] depicts her recreation of the Ottawa being towed by a steam tug to her last berth in Rhyl Harbour (known as Foryd). 

By then she would have lost her masts, as she had been used as a storage ship by the Royal Navy in Portsmouth and Portland harbours for the previous 10 years. 

See more here (in Welsh).https://www.bbc.co.uk/cymrufyw/19522084

The ship's voyages between 1883-5 include South America, Sri Lanka, Australia, Mauritius, Barbados, and then home via Mobile in the USA. 

She was damaged twice, once in the "risky passage" round the south of Australia, and once coming back home across the Atlantic, when she had to jettison her deck load.

At Rhyl, she was supposed to be broken up, but part of the ship survived. The remains of the vessel have lain on a sandbar in the harbour, with only a few timbers now visible, although part of the ship is buried under sand. 

Even so, it is almost the only survivor of what was a common type of trading sailing vessel - and there is interest from Canada to preserve it.

From ...https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/~cmi/books/miscWr/ottawa.html