Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Magical 200th year for Unicorn as plans for dry dock revealed
DUNDEE’S historic HMS Unicorn will not be dry docked until at least 2028.
Scotland’s oldest ship will celebrate its bicentenary today, marking 200 years since HMS Unicorn was launched into the River Medway, Kent, in 1824.
Details of Project Safe Haven, which aims to secure the future of the ship, were revealed at the end of last year.
Under the plans, Unicorn will be moved to East Graving Dock from its current location, becoming the centrepiece of the new Dundee Maritime Heritage Centre. There will also be major conservation works on the ship.
While Project Safe Haven is still being developed and seeking funding, it is expected to run from 2026 to 2030, with the ship in dry dock by the last quarter of 2028. The ship was last dry docked in the 1990s.
Works, funded by the National Heritage Memorial Fund, are also to take place this year “to keep the ship in a floating condition”.
Matthew Bellhouse Moran, director, museum and development, said: “Project Safe Haven represents the culmination of £500,000 spent on surveys, studies and investigations commissioned since 2019 to ensure the future of HMS Unicorn in a sustainable manner that also preserves the highest proportion of its original material.
“Conducted to the highest standard, it is on the basis of this work that the Unicorn Preservation Society was awarded £1.2 million for emergency repairs in 2023 from the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NMHF), the Headley Trust and others.
“Project Safe Haven is in the detailed development and fundraising stage but is planned to run from 2026 to 2030, with the ship in dry dock by the last quarter of 2028.”
Currently, Unicorn’s exterior timbers are in “very poor” condition. Mr Bellhouse Moran described the interior as in “fair to good” condition.
He said: “The structural weakness of the ship will be mitigated by the NMHF-funded works in 2024 to keep the ship in a floating condition while we prepare the East Graving Dock to receive the ship to investigate the hull.
“Currently, the majority of the failed and missing exterior timbers are 20th Century replacements that have not been fitted in the proper manner or have been sourced from inferior materials.
“The ship has not been dry docked since the dilapidation of the East Graving Dock in the 1990s and many of the issues with Unicorn’s current condition stem from lack of investment over many decades.”
Project Safe Haven will cost around £27m, including the costs to repair the East Graving Dock, relocate the ship and create a museum.
Mr Bellhouse Moran believes that by “improving Unicorn’s capacity to generate revenue”, the ship’s future will be secured.
He added: “The funding package is complex and we are at the beginning of our fundraising journey but as a named partner on the Tay Cities Deal we expect to be able to draw down a significant sum against this to be match-funded from other sources.”
To celebrate 200 years of Unicorn, locals are being asked to sign a birthday card available on the ship’s website.
There will be a number of celebrations held over the next two years, including a musical festival held on the ship in autumn.
June will see the premiere of Unicorn’s commissioned brass ensemble piece When The Brazen Bands Shall Play by Michael Betteridge, which was funded by the Imperial War Museums 14-18 Now Fund.
Mr Bellhouse Moran said: “We are delighted to launch in 2024 our two-year programme of celebrations and events marking an astonishing 200 years of history as one of the oldest ships in the world still afloat today.”
HMS Unicorn was built from around 1,000 oak trees and cost more than £26,500, which would be the equivalent of around £2.4m today.
The ship was designed to be an agile and powerful vessel, requiring a crew of 300, but was never called to battle.
By the 1850s, it was being used to store gunpowder and was towed to Dundee by steamship to be used as a training ship for the Royal Naval Reserve in 1873.
Unicorn was also the only wooden ship to have received a surrender from a submarine, when on May 14 1945, a week after the war ended, German U-Boat U-2326 arrived off the entrance to the Tay flying the black flag of surrender.
In the 1960s, the Admiralty considered breaking up HMS Unicorn. This led to the Unicorn Preservation Society’s formation and in 1968 the Duke of Edinburgh accepted the ship from the Ministry of Defence on behalf of the society.
It opened as an attraction to the public in 1975 and was given museum accreditation status last year.