At peak holiday periods, more than 1,200 eager passengers lined her wooden decks to enjoy the views as the ferry ploughed across the Sydney Heads. It was an experience immortalised by poets and travel writers, a journey to a destination promoted as being “seven miles from Sydney and a thousand miles from care”.

The sight of this once gracious ship lying semi-submerged on her side at Sydney’s Coal Loader Wharf under a tide of flotsam has elicited sadness among Sydneysiders, but it wasn’t a shock.

“For observers of all kinds – yachtsmen, casual walkers at the Coal Loader, officialdom, museum people – the sinking of the Baragoola has been an event waiting to happen for many years,” says maritime heritage expert Alan Edenborough, president of the Australian Maritime Museums Council.

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A government heritage committee was told in July 2009 that the Baragoola was in imminent danger of sinking, but for 12-and-a-half years nothing was done. A costly major refit had been necessary to repair the rotting hull; even if the vast sums could have been raised, getting the ship to the dry dock for repairs would have meant it crossing the harbour, and the authorities determined she was not seaworthy enough to make the passage.

Enthusiastic volunteers from the Baragoola Preservation Association tried their best, but it was late in the day and they lacked the expertise and the funding to take on such an ambitious project. So Sydney sat on its hands while the old vessel rotted away at her berth.

“Sydney as a city is built on one of the greatest harbours in the world – Sydneysiders want to live by it, boat on it and look at it, but when it comes to the heritage they just don’t care,” Edenborough says.

The wharfs and stevedores of this once vibrant working harbour were gradually replaced by anodyne luxury homes complete with harbour panoramas. Sydney became gentrified and, like many prosperous port cities, lost touch with its roots.

Edenborough, who is a veteran of restoring historic vessels and a life member of the Sydney Heritage Fleet, says the new generation of Sydneysiders is more likely to object to the unsightly reality of any remaining traditional harbour activities.

Of course, Sydney is home to an impressive maritime museum and there remains a core of maritime history enthusiasts, including the volunteers who restore and maintain vessels for the Sydney Heritage fleet.

Richard Wesley, a former director of the Hong Kong Maritime Museum, now lives and works in Sydney, his home city, and says the loss of the Baragoola was greeted with sadness by older generations of Sydneysiders, for whom she was once part of daily life.

“Steam ferries began criss-crossing Sydney Harbour from 1842 and have remained an integral part of living in Sydney ever since,” Wesley says. It’s hard to resist comparison with the Star Ferry service in Hong Kong, popular since its inception in 1888.

Despite the nostalgia that the loss of the Baragoola provoked, Edenborough thinks it unlikely it will lead to a fundamental change of heart in New South Wales (NSW) about the protection of maritime history. The last remaining old Manly steam ferry, the SS South Steyne, which launched in Scotland in 1938, was recently evicted from her Sydney berth, where the fully restored vessel had been operating as a floating restaurant.

“There seems to be a stigma with heritage in NSW,” her owner, Brian McDermott, told The Sydney Morning Herald.

In the meantime, salvagers have been slicing up the Baragoola. Her dismembered remains will be sent for scrap and recycling. There will have been little left with which to celebrate her centenary on February 14.

“It takes an event like the sinking of Baragoola to get any focus on the value of heritage items, particularly maritime heritage,” Edenborough says. “Sadly, that focus does not last long.”