The Royal Research Ship 'Discovery. Part 11.

Historic Wooden Ship Conservation and Restoration - The Reality

I pick up the story of the Discovery again from the year 2000. She had been moved to her new abode, Discovery Point, Dundee, in 1992 under a blaze of publicity. Now she was permanently at home in her custom built dock looking out over the lovely River Tay Estuary; the historic railway bridge, built in 1882 upstream; the road bridge, built in 1964, downstream. It was and is an idyllic setting!

As in many other high profile developments, consultant's forecasts of visitor numbers and therefore estimated revenue generated had been encouraging, sufficient to justify the building of the dock, visitor and conference centre in the first instance. The first two years were a great success with people coming from all over the world, never mind locally, to see the new attraction. Thereafter visitor numbers started to slide, slowly at first then, year by year, grew less and, as a consequence, revenues grew less. During the years of plenty staff had been increased, not by much, but enough to increase the salary outgoings to a level that became unsustainable. During the year 2000 a complete review of the business took place under the stewardship of a new Chairman of the Trust. Inevitably, costs were pruned, jobs were lost and maintenance suffered. Two years later in 2002 the business gradually recovered and I was commissioned, on a voluntary basis, to review a Full Structural Survey of Discovery completed a few years earlier. As a result of that review it was concluded that the Survey Report was no longer relevant and a new survey had to be done.

Such an operation does not come cheap, financial assistance had to be found. The only body in the United Kingdom that could provide the assistance needed was The National Heritage Lottery Fund. However the process of convincing that body it should provide help was long and detailed, resulting in many meetings and form filling. However, in saying that, the process was transparent and fair and the Edinburgh Offices of the Fund provided whatever assistance it could along the way. In early 2004, good news! The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), agreed to support the project. Tenders were sent out to potential contractors and returned completed. A Preferred Bidder was selected and a Marine Consultancy Company contracted to do the work. The total cost of the Project was estimated at £52,000 (US$81,700 in today's terms), including Project Management and, after bidding for the latter I was appointed Project Manager.

A day and date was set to dry-dock Discovery to begin the Survey. The day arrived and unforeseen difficulties immediately came to light. The ship had not been dry-docked for more than seven years and during that time silt had accumulated in the dock to a height of more than a metre in places. Her underwater hull could not be surveyed before the silt was cleared; the budget was finite and the timescale tight. The silt was of a river-borne nature so it could and had to be returned to whence it came. The quality of the silt was such that it was easily identifiable, in that when Discovery was afloat and the level of the dock water needed to be restored river water at high tide was allowed to enter the dock system. The tidal flow in the Estuary, although complicated to some, is well known to others who have studied it, researched it and wrote learn-ed papers on it. When high water was reached in the river beside Discovery's dock the profile of the water layer density would have been low at the surface gradually becoming more dense with depth as the outgoing fresh water from the River Tay mixed with the saline water of the flood tide. It was therefore safe to assume that the source of the water used to restore the dock level, given the level of the inlets, was river water mixed with the clean salt water of the incoming tide. This assumption was important. If there had been the slightest likelihood that the silt could have been contaminated by, say, heavy metals, then its disposal would have been costly and time-consuming. As no sources of heavy metals existed upstream and heavy rains or snow melt would, at times increase the river's out-flow volume, any river-borne silt would be a composed of earth and vegetable matter. So it proved to be.

Innovations in the form of high pressure water pumps with a high lift, manpower on the dock bottom directing water-jets into the silt n order to turn it back to a fluid state, were employed. It was a dirty job, but someone had to do it! What should have taken a day took fourteen days, the whole of the period allocated for the physical survey. The survey schedule was rearranged and the internal examination completed first rather than last. The surveyor, to his eternal credit, donned waist length,
water-tight waders and, bit by bit as the silt was cleared, surveyed the ships bottom. An interesting observation is worth recalling. I have already mentioned that the silt was composed mainly of earth and vegetable matter, well, this matter compressed from the bottom up as further layers were laid on top. The result of this was that while it was a sandy colour on top, it gradually turned a near black the deeper it became. Over the years some visitors had thrown coins into the dock for 'good luck'. When these coins were recovered they looked freshly minted, cleaned by a chemical reaction between the decomposing matter in the silt and the metal of the coin.

Conditions difficult in dry-dock bottom

Nevertheless, the survey was completed and the final report awaited. This was not received and analysed until November 1994 when the scope of the work that needed to be done was finally decided. The repair, renovation and conservation measures required were substantial and, until an estimate of the cost had been completed, no further steps could be taken.

As part of the HLF Grant Conditions a Conservation Plan had to be delivered before the Survey Project could be deemed completed, this was finished and delivered in February 2005. It was to form the basis of future work to be achieved over a period of the next 25 to 30 years. However, first that work had to be prioritised and the first major project determined. A further nine months were spent in gathering detail before an accurate determination of the cost was finalised. It revealed that nearly £700,000 (US$1,092,000 in today's terms), in funding was needed and the Trust did not have such an amount of money. Without financial support the Project was dead in the water. Again the Heritage Lottery Fund was approached and the long road to a decision as to whether it would agree to help fund the works began. Meantime the Trust was making frantic efforts to gather supporting funds, using every possible avenue available; sponsored walks; dances; dinners; local and national business donations; other charitable bodies, the list was almost endless.

Another lesson that must be understood is that, above all else, one must be meticulous and patient. The Trust's patience and diligence was rewarded in November 2006, when the Heritage Lottery Fund agreed to support the Project by providing over 70% of the total cost in Grant Aid. Confirmation at the RRS 'Discovery' Restoration and Conservation Project 2007 - 2009 could commence in March 2007, after all Agreements had been signed, was received. It had taken four years to get there and now the hard work would start in earnest.