RRS Discovery

300px RRS Discovery in Antarctica
Career (UK)
Name:	RRS Discovery
Owner:	Dundee Heritage Trust since 1985
Builder:	Dundee Shipbuilders Company, Dundee
Laid down:	1900
Launched:	21 March 1901
Fate:	Museum ship in Dundee, Scotland
General characteristics
Class and type:	Wooden Barque; 1 funnel, 3 masts
Tonnage:	736 grt
Displacement:	1570 tonnes
Length:	172 ft (52 m)
Beam:	33 ft (10 m)
Propulsion:	Coal fired steam engine and sail
Speed:	8 knots
Crew:	11 Officers; 36 Men
Notes:	Range: Limited by water and provisions

For the 1962 ship, see RRS Discovery (1962).

The RRS Discovery was the last wooden three-masted ship to be built in Britain. Designed for Antarctic research, she was launched in 1901. Her first mission was the British National Antarctic Expedition, carrying Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton on their first, successful journey to the Antarctic, known as the Discovery Expedition. She is now the centrepiece of visitor attraction in her home, Dundee.

History

On 16 March 1900, construction on the Discovery began in Dundee, Scotland, by the Dundee Shipbuilders Company. She was launched into the Firth of Tay on 21 March 1901 by Lady Markham, the wife of Sir Clements Markham who was President of the Royal Geographical Society.

Discovery had coal-fired auxiliary steam engines, but had to rely primarily on sail because the coal bunkers did not have sufficient capacity to take the ship on long voyages. She was rigged as a barque. According to Shackleton, the ship was a bad sailer, and carried too much sail aft and not enough forward; while Scott worried that the design of the ship's hull was unsuitable for work in pack ice. The ship had a massively built wooden hull designed to withstand being frozen into the ice. The propeller and rudder could be hoisted out of the way to prevent ice damage. Iron shod bows were severely raked so that when ramming the ice they would ride up over the margin and crush the ice with deadweight. The Discovery rolled badly in the open sea where the flat shallow hull, built with no protuberances to work well in ice, provided minimal stability in heavy seas.

British National Antarctic Expedition

Main article: Discovery Expedition

Five months after setting sail on 6 August 1901 from the Isle of Wight, she sighted the Antarctic coastline on 8 January 1902. During the first month Scott began charting the coastline. Then, in preparation for the winter, he weighed anchor in McMurdo Sound. Unfortunately, this was where the ship would remain, locked in ice, for the next two years; the expedition had expected to spend the winter there and to move on in the spring. Despite this, the Expedition was able to determine that Antarctica was indeed a continent, and they were able to relocate the Southern Magnetic Pole. Scott, Shackleton and Edward Wilson also achieved a Furthest South of 82 degrees 18 minutes. The ship was eventually freed on 16 February 1904 by the use of controlled explosives which allowed the ice to be moved away by butting and shunting, thus assisting in the break up of the ice. RRS Discovery finally sailed for home, arriving back at Spithead on 10 September 1904.

Cargo vessel

The British National Antarctic Expedition was acclaimed upon its return but was also in serious financial trouble, and so in 1905, Discovery was sold to the Hudson's Bay Company, who used her as a cargo vessel between London and Hudson Bay, Canada until the First World War, when she began carrying munitions to Russia. In 1916, she was loaned to the British Government to rescue Shackleton's party marooned on Elephant Island, but they were rescued before she arrived. In 1917, she carried supplies to the White Russians during the Russian Civil War. At the end of the hostilities Discovery was chartered by various companies for work in the Atlantic, but outdated and outclassed by more modern merchant vessels she was soon laid up, spending the early 1920s as the headquarters of the 16th Stepney Sea Scouts.

Discovery Investigations

Main article: Discovery Investigations

In 1923 her fortunes were revived when the Crown Agents for the Colonies purchased her for further research work in the Antarctic. Re-registered to Stanley in the Falklands and designated as a Royal Research Ship, Discovery underwent a £114,000 refit before sailing in October 1925 for the South Seas to chart the migration patterns of whale stocks as part of the Discovery Investigations. Her research role continued when the British Government lent her to BANZARE, the British Australian and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition. She served in this duty from 1929 until 1931.

Boy Scouts

Returning to Britain, her research days now over, Discovery was laid up until 1936 when she was presented to the Boy Scouts Association as a stationary training ship for Sea Scouts in London. During the war her engines and boilers were removed for scrap to help with the war effort. Too costly for the Scouts Association to maintain she was transferred to the Admiralty in 1955 for use as a drill ship for the Royal Navy Auxiliary Reserve. As the years passed her condition deteriorated and when no longer of use to the Navy, she was in danger of being scrapped. Saved from the breakers yard by the Maritime Trust, into whose care she passed in 1979, her future had been secured. Berthed on the River Thames and open to the public, the trust spent some £500,000 on essential restoration until she was passed into the ownership of the Dundee Heritage Trust in 1985.

Voyage home

File:RRS Discovery.jpg

RRS Discovery, in Dundee.

On 28 March 1986 Discovery left London aboard the cargo ship Happy Mariner to make her journey home to the city that built her, arriving on the River Tay on 3 April to a tumultuous welcome. Moved to a custom built dock in 1992 and listed as part of the National Historic Fleet, Core Collection, Discovery is now the centrepiece of Dundee's visitor attraction Discovery Point and civil marriages can be held there. The city also markets itself with the strapline One City, Many Discoveries, in honour of RRS Discovery, the research work of the two universities in the city, the Ninewells teaching hospital and the other creative activities and innovation that take place in this vibrant city.

The ship features on the crest of the coat of arms of the British Antarctic Territory.

Discovery features as part of the new Polar museum based at Discovery Point in Dundee. Since the 1990s the museum has concentrated on interpreting the vessel on all of her voyages. The collections include personal items from the ship's crew as well as information on her scientific activities. Items range from the games played by the crew on her first expedition to examples of sea fauna. There are several star objects on display including Captain Scott's rifle and pipe. Her three main voyages: The National Antarctic Expedition (1901-1904), the Discovery Oceanographic Expedition (1925-1927) and the BANZAR expeditions (1929-31), are all explored in the museum through film and photographic evidence with artefacts from each era represented. The museum also holds other pieces from Scott's subsequent Terra Nova expedition and Shackleton's Endurance expedition.

The ship is now displayed in a purpose-built dock facility and her configuration is a near as possible to her 1924 state, when she was refitted in the Vosper yard at Portsmouth.

Subsequent ships

There have been two subsequent royal research ships named Discovery, RRS Discovery II (1929) and the current RRS Discovery. The present ship is due to be replaced by a further Discovery, which is to be built in 2013.^{[citation needed]}

The spaceship Discovery One in Arthur C. Clarke's book 2001:A Space Odyssey was named by Clarke after RRS Discovery; Clarke used to eat his lunch aboard her, as she was moored near the office where he worked in London. According to Clarke, he was unaware that RRS Discovery was launched in 1901, so the fact that she was celebrating her centenary in the year of his book is a coincidence.

External links

• Discovery Point Antarctic Museum
• NERC Research Ship Unit

Sources

• Huntford, Roland: Shackleton. ISBN 0-689-11429-X.
• Paine, Lincoln P: Ships of Discovery and Exploration, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston (2000). ISBN 9780395984154.