Discovery gets £650,000 facelift — and stands by to be boarded

Press, 20 November 1981, Page 14

Discovery gets £650,000 facelift — and stands by to be boarded

From

KEN COATES,

in London

“Imagine, while you stand on this deck, that it is now the winter of 1902, and the ship is immovably trapped in the ice in McMurdo Sound ... So reads a notice aboard the Royal Research Ship, Discovery, a frequent visitor to New Zealand waters in years gone by, now being restored at a berth in St Katharine’s Dock. Here, in a quiet basin behind the Dickins Inn, lie many famous retired British ships, at rest in the care of Britain’s Maritime Trust. It is not too difficult to imagine the stout, squarerigged three-masted Discovery, the strongest wooden ship ever built, ploughing her way south from Lyttelton. The Canterbury port would have been the last call for the early Antarctic voyage of exploration under Captain Robert Falcon Scott in 1901. Work is well under way on a £650,000 restoration project, and two shipwrights are living and working on the ship which will again be rigged as a barque. For years she was berthed in the Thames alongside the Victoria Embankment; and the Admiralty, fearing the wooden hull had gone as rotten as a very old apple, handed the vessel over to the trust. With her masts removed the Discovery was towed down the river to Sheerness, to dry-dock. There she was given a thorough examination by ex-

perts: not an easy operation as the hull is two feet thick and of several layers of timber, so designed to withstand the tremendous pressures of Antarctic ice. But apart from small areas of rotten wood around the bow and stern, already known, the underwater hull was found to be in excellent order. The Dundee-built ship, with her outer skin of tough greenheart, is still immensely robust, and the trust is confident of being able to preserve her for many years. Her unique construction, based on the design of a whaler, which accompanied an early expedition to the North Pole, has been described as the final flowering of hundreds of years of wooden shipbuilding. But the Discovery will not be restored to her original appearance as in Scott’s time, as she was extensively rebuilt and modified in 1924. Initially she had been given a small spread of canvas, but her rig was later improved; wardroom, mess deck, galley, scientific laboratories and • teak deckhouses added. Even a seaplane was carried for later, oceanographic research, and what were the first whale conservation studies. The mainmast and foremast were both moved forward — a recommendation which Captain Scott had made years before so that the ship would sail better.

The Discovery is “hardly a yacht,” as shipwright working on her, David Chase, puts it. She rolled and pitched, inducing seasickness in even the strongest stomachs. There was little give in the timbers because of her rigid construction and steel strengthening.

The. Discovery was built especially for Britain’s national Antarctic expedition of 1901 which aimed to penetrate the ice cap, and survey it by sledge. For two years, the tiny vessel (she is only 172 feet long) was locked in the ice and was only freed five days

before she was to be abandoned. Four years after setting out, she returned to Britain with her crew of volunteers under Captain Scott. After her rigours in the southern ice, the barque, with her coal-burning engine, began a life of hard slog when bought by the Hudson Bay Company. Accommodation below decks and scientific laboratories were ripped out to make way for more cargo. For six years, she crisscrossed the north Atlantic and called at Canadian trading posts picking up furs and leaving stores. In 1914 she was sent south to pick up Sir Ernest Shackleton and his crew whose ship, the Endurance, had been crushed in the ice. Then came a two-year layup before she was chartered to the French who used her to deliver orders of weapons to the Russians during the First World War. Another series of voyages south followed after she was bought by the Discovery Committee. This joint Falkland Islands and Colonial Office organisation rebuilt and modified the Discovery as an oceanographic and research ship. With early echo-sounding and radio equipment, as well as laboratories, she was the

latest of her type in the world. She even carried a seaplane on deck and made what were known as the Discovery voyages between 1925-29. Scientifically they were more important than Captain Scott’s expedition, 20 years previously. And from 1929-31 the Discovery returned once again to the Antarctic for, a series of exploration voyages under Sir Douglas Mawson when thousands of miles of the coastline of the vast continent were mapped. On her return the ship was laid up in the East India Dock for six years and then sold to the Sea Scouts as a training vessel. Today about the only part of the ship still resembling in appearance what existed in 1925 is the wardroom — with its dark varnish, brass handrails and long polished table and shiny chairs. Above the cabin , doors opening off the wardroom appear the names, Royds, Oates, Shackleton and other early explorers. But _ these were added years later by the Sea Scouts, and are not authentic. The Scouts eventually handed over the ship to the Admiralty and the Royal Navy used her for training, recruiting and as a headquarters. Then two years ago, she was finally given to the Maritime Trust for preservation — considered a doubtful proposition then. Already restoration has

cost £200,000 and several hundreds of pounds have come from Australia and New Zealand. The trust is dependent largely on donations for its work. The idea is to make the Discovery into a working museum. Some sails, of net, will be fitted, and the yards are at present being made of Douglas Fir by a skilled craftsman on the Isle of Wight. Eventually, when the ship is fitted out as a museum showing how the men on the ship worked and lived, sails will be hoisted at certain times of the day, and the ship will to a degree be run as it once was. Already, a harmonium, presented by the people of Christchurch to Scott’s first expedition, has been placed in the chartroom. It wheezed an accompaniment to lusty hymn singing, according to an attached plaque which says it was used for all church services aboard ship from 1901 to 1904. After the voyage, it was

presented by officers and men to Navy House in London. It looks to be in excellent order. Meanwhile work continues under the watchful eye of Mr Tim Parr, a naval architect who is project officer for the trust, and a naval history enthusiast. He is determined to try to replace the ship’s triple expansion engine with a copy. “And I would like to see a proper mainmast fitted, instead of the present steelshafted mast with timber cladding around the outside. “There is a suitable tree for it in the New Forest planted about 1870. It has my name on it, and I am hopeful — that is, if I can find a firm to sponsor the scheme.” In these days of economic recession such projects tend to falter through lack of funds. But the Greater London Council has promised a grant and subsidy, and the ship is already open to the public, along with other historic ships.