Details

wooden ship

Location

postcode DD1 4XA
Discovery Point
Dundee Quay
map

Information

Discover Point
museum
Apr-Oct
1000-1800
Nov-Mar
1000-1700
£7.50

Links

Wikipedia
Dundee Heritage Trust
Undiscovered Scotland
Tripadvisor

Questions?
Comments?

R S S Discovery

Mark is a sucker for sailing ships, and can walk around quays and moored ships for hours looking at the rigging and going belowdecks. I'm not quite as fascinated, but it's a good trade off for the hours I drag him looking for "piles of rocks".


walking along the quay to see the unicorn and discovery

Antarctic Journey

The Discovery, moored at the quay in Dundee, was designed as an antarctic exploration ship -- and first sailed with Scott and Shackleton on their first journey to the Antarctic in 1901.

While the ship has a coal-burning steam engine, it is primarily a sailing vessel and was the last three-masted wooden ship built in Britain. Dundee shipyards were well-known for outfitting whaling ships, and they were chosento build the Discovery -- a purpose-built ship for polar exploration.


rigging on two of the masts

Throughout her history, the DIscovery has been an cargo vessel as well as an exploration ship (she made several trips to the Antartic between 1923 and 1931) and as a training ship for the Boy Scouts and eventually in the 1950s as a training sihp for the Royal Navy before being abandoned. The Discovery was restored by the Maritime Trust in 1979 and settled into a berth in Dundee as a tourist attraction, part of the Polar museum displays at Discovery Point.