HMS UNICORN: Summary
His Majesty’s Frigate Unicorn, of 46 guns, was built for the Royal Navy in the Royal Dockyard at Chatham and launched in 1824. She is now the World’s last intact warship from the days of sail, one of the six oldest ships in the world and Scotland’s only representative of the sailing navy.
There are only five ships left in the entire world older than Unicorn
HMS Unicorn as she might have appeared under full sail, by Harold Wyllie
A sailing frigate was a powerful cruising vessel, heavily armed and fast, and Unicorn would have been one of the elite ships of the fleet in her day. However, she was built shortly after the great sea campaign against Napoleon, as part of a programme for re-equipping a battle-weary Royal Navy. This was the start of a long period of peace and she was not required for immediate service: she was not rigged, but instead her hull was roofed over and she was put into reserve.
HMS Unicorn spent her early years in reserve or ‘ordinary’ in the south of England and was brought to Dundee in 1873 to serve as the reserve training ship for the Tay. She carried out this function for nearly a century, and also acted as the headquarters ship for the Senior Naval Officer in Dundee during both World Wars.
Unicorn remained unrigged and under the cover of a roof her entire working life, and the roof which now covers Unicorn’s upper deck is believed to be the same one which was fitted immediately after her launch.
As a result of this continuous protection, Unicorn is considered to be the best preserved of all historic wooden ships in the world from her era.
Unicorn was also built at a time of great technological change, under the supervision of Sir Robert Seppings, the Surveyor of the Navy 1813-1832, at a time when a shortage of timber and the availability of iron was beginning to affect the way ships were built.
Unicorn represents the last great flourish of wooden shipbuilding, and also illustrates the birth of the iron steamship.
UNICORN’S Future – Dundee Central Waterfront?
A proposed site for Unicorn within Dundee's central waterfront development
There is now an extraordinary opportunity to link Unicorn, Discovery and the Dundee Central Waterfront, and for Unicorn to act as the iconic cultural centrepiece for a major urban redevelopment.
Unicorn’s heritage merit is well recognized: she is objectively rated as one of a handful of the most important historic ships in the world. The new Department of Culture Media & Sport Advisory Committee on National Historic Ships, who advise the Secretary of State and other public funding bodies on ship preservation and funding priorities, recognizes that Unicorn has been consistently under-funded in recent years and now considers the ship to be the most important ‘Ship at Risk’ within the UK.
The Unicorn Preservation Society has been engaged for some years now with the Heritage Lottery Fund, the main source of capital funding for historic ships, but progress to date has been limited by the HLF’s desire to see a plan for Unicorn which places her in a positive relationship with both Discovery and Dundee’s waterfront development.
The Dundee Central Waterfront Board has now started on the re-development of the land between the Caird Hall and the River Tay, with a plan to replace the existing buildings and tarmac spaghetti with a vibrant city grid of tree-lined boulevards, street-level cafes and shopping, a central park and a dock, with HM Frigate Unicorn as the cultural centrepiece for this far-sighted urban re-development.
This plan has now been presented at a joint meeting with the Heritage Lottery Fund, Unicorn Preservation Society, Dundee Planning Department and National Historic Ships, and the Unicorn Preservation Society has submitted a bid for an HLF Project Planning Grant which is the necessary precursor to a full project grant. This bid has the full support of National Historic Ships, Dundee Central Waterfront Board, Scottish Enterprise Tayside and Dundee Heritage Trust, amongst others, and the majority of the matching funding is also already in place.
UNICORN is a ‘Dundee Ship’
HMS Unicorn photographed in 1968 during her last weeks in the Navy
Ships are essentially nomadic and rarely have ‘homes’; indeed their whole purpose is to travel. So when the time comes for a working ship to retire there may be no obvious final site for her.
Unicorn, on the other hand, is most unusual amongst big ships in having a ‘home’. She spent her entire working life in one port, Dundee, has now been here 134 years, and is now firmly embedded in Dundee’s social and maritime history. The concept of curtilage is becoming increasingly understood and valued by modern society, and a major advantage of the proposed preservation of Unicorn within Dundee’s Central Waterfront is that it allows Dundee and its hinterland to maximize this extraordinary aspect of one of our potentially great assets.
The Governors are clear that their main priority is the Preservation of HMS Unicorn but they are particularly keen to support options which will allow her to remain in her own home in her old age.
The ‘UNICORN’ of Scotland
Unicorn's figurehead in evening light
Unicorns are the heraldic supporters of the Scottish Royal Arms, and an earlier Unicorn was the flagship of the old Scots navy. There could be few more appropriate ships to preserve in Scotland than H.M.Frigate Unicorn.
