Archaeology Notes

Event ID 860046

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/860046

NO43SW 8014 c. 40843 30246

N56 27.645 W2 57.605

For adjacent and successor Royal Naval Reserve training centre (HMS Camperdown), see NO43SW 712.

Unicorn: uncompleted sailing frigate.

Former name[s]: HMS Unicorn II, HMS Cressy, HMS Unicorn.

Built 1824 by Chatham Dockayrd, Chatham, England.

Original owners: Royal navy.

Propulsion: full-rigged ship rig (intended).

Tonnage: 1084 gross, 1077 displacement.

Length: 166ft (50.6m)

Breadth: 39.92ft (12.17m)

Draight: 13.08ft (4.0m)

Materials: wood throughout.

Original use: frigate (never completed).

Condition: intact hull, never rigged.

Present owners: Unicorn Preservation Society

Location: Dundee, Scotland.

One of two surviving sailing frigates of the Royal Navy. It was never commissioned as a seagoing vessel and spent its entire career as a stationary drill ship.

Present owners had intended to rog the vessel, but apparently now plan to preserve her in her present configuration.

[Additional references cited].

N J Brouwer 1999.

[HMS] Unicorn: 5th rate [46 guns]

1.08 [tons] BM [Builders' Measurement]

151.5ft [48.2m] x 40.5ft [12.25m]

[Built] Chatham Dockyard 30 March 1824

Powder hulk 1860: RNR drillship November 1873, Dundee

(Bore name Unicorn 11 Feb Feb [19]39, then [HMS] Cressy 20 November 1941 - 14 July 1959.

Handed over to Unicorn Preservation Society, 29 September 1969.

J J Colledge and B Warlow 2006.

Following prolonged service as a drillship and training vessel of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and (later) Royal Naval Reserve, this vessel is now in preservation and open to the public as a museum ship. She is derigged, and lies near the SW corner of Victoria Dock (NO43SW 89.00). She remains afloat and might potentially be moved, although not under her own power. Launched at Chatham, Kent, in 1824, she has been described by Osborne and Armstrong as 'perhaps the least-altered wooden hull in good condition anywhere in the world.'

This vessel is classified within the core collection of National Historic Ships, Register of Historic Vessels (Greenwich): the relevant Certificate No is 498.

The location assigned to this record is essentially tentative, the vessel not being noted on the available maps and charts of the area.

Information from RCAHMS (RJCM), 23 December 2008.

B D Osborne and R Armstrong 2007.