an enclosed wheelhouse and conversion from coal to diesel oil firing. Thus Eppleton Hall was made to serve as Kortum's "private yacht" and was re-registered as such. On 18 September 1969 the tug sailed on the first leg of the journey to San Francisco (via the Panama Canal) to pass under the Golden Gate bridge by late March, 1970, six months and nine days after setting sail. Newhall subsequently wrote the book The Eppleton Hall which tells the story of the discovery and restoration of the ship, the events surrounding Reliant, and the eleven thousand mile journey from the Tyne to San Francisco. The route chosen was determined by the tug's conversion to diesel firing with the resultant limited fuel capacity and her low overall power output. Sailing via Dover, Lisbon, Cape Verde, Georgetown, via Panama and San Diego to name but a few of her scheduled stops; not counting running out of fuel in the Bay of Biscay, vacuum pump failure in mid Atlantic, rescuing a fishing vessel off the coast of Mexico, and nearly foundering in a storm out of San Diego on the final leg to San Francisco. Donated by Kortum to the National Park Service in 1979, she is now berthed at Hyde Street Pier, San Francisco. She has been restored to resemble her condition post-War 1946, when refurbished for France Fenwick, Tyne and Wear Ltd. Present Day Not eligible for grants reserved for US built vessels, the ship is visible from and moored to Hyde Street Pier but is not open to the public for boarding. Despite this it is in a superior condition to , a similar paddle tug built in Scotland in 1931, currently lying at Chatham awaiting funds for restoration, having been sunk in 1994 and then salvaged some years later. Reliant was dismantled by the National Maritime Museum and sectioned for display in pride of place in the Museum's Neptune Hall, where it remained on display until 2005. The tug was then controversially removed and scrapped as a cost reduction exercise, with only a single engine and a sectioned representation of one paddle wheel remaining on display (as had been originally intended back in 1969). Further controversy followed as members of the public complained to have been told that the tug, having been visited by many during its nearly 25 years on display, had been put into 'storage' when this was