Tour of SS Explorer. former fisheries research vessel.
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ก.ค. 2024
- A tour of the SS Explorer, currently birthed in Leith near Edinburgh. she worked from 1955 to 1984.
The plan is to eventually open her up as a floating museum, to preserve an important part of Scottish maritime history.
For a website ran by one of our volunteers: ssexplorer.org/
To book a tour or to make a donation: www.theexplorer.scot/
To a Facebook page ran by a volunteer: groups/ss.ex...
There may be a delay in the links becoming active, while TH-cam does all its checks. - ยานยนต์และพาหนะ
I was a trawler-man in the Cod wars. On a triple expansion coal burner. I new of her but never saw her. She is very unique in may ways. Thank you. Thank you for over dubbing what is a great Video with Music. I have falling in love with her already. I wish I could help you but at 84 thats not posible.
Thanks for watching. We have a number of volunteers that are around the same age, all retired sea farers, so you'd fit right in. You're always welcome to pay us a visit if ever you're near Edinburgh
I love seeing engine rooms like this intact. I'm sure it would be impossibly expensive to certify the dangerous old boiler and get it all running again, but I hope it's able to be kept intact for many decades to come!
I was a volunteer on the explorer got three years my son and I floored the bridge and various other jobs then moved on to wooden boats.
Good luck to you all with that project, I hope you have an eventual success! It is disgusting how many people have no interest in preserving our heritage, our culture and thus our identity. Old ships, old airplanes, old buildings, old cars, old locomotives etc need to be preserved or our heritage will be gone forever. Always keep in mind that there are people out there that want this loss to happen, like those at the WEF in Davos. You must hook up with the tourism industry and with social media about Marine / Maritime history and your end game must be to make the ship seaworthy and do tours with it. Best Regards from Alaska!
We're raising our social media presence, these videos being part of that, and I absolutely agree, we need to preserve parts of our history.
We'd love to be able to make her sea worthy again, but she's far too far gone for that. It would be cheaper and easier to build a brand new replica.
The end goal is to have her opened up to the public as a floating museum, in a more accessible part of the harbour. The cost of that is prohibitively expensive at the moment, so sea worthy is definitely out of the question unfortunately.
We do host visits for members of the public, but they have to book in advanced and go through port security before they can get to us. We can only host a few people at a time too, due to the condition she's in. Not great when it comes to tourism etc
Thanks for the viewing. GOD bless you and your family
What a beautiful ship! Good luck with the restoration and even though I'm restoring a riveted trawler from 1950 I can't even imagine how much work you've to put into Explorer to turn it into a museum.
Thank you, the short answer would be "alot"
Good luck with your restoration too, it's no small task.
I’m totally overwhelmed! You have to make this understandable for more folks who could possibly help!😮
The links in the description are probably the best way to get in touch regarding helping. Visits can also be booked if you're local to Edinburgh, we're always looking for skilled people with a keen interest in maritime history.
Thank you for posting this. Although I am interested ( and active) in historic vessels I knew nothing of this one. I wish you well in your preservation efforts, its a long hard road. Sad that she spent so many years swinging round the hook and decaying. As an ex merchant seaman it saddens me that the UK shows so little interest in preserving our commercial maritime heritage. If but 10% of all the money that is spent on preserving steam railways were spent on historic vessels,we might have a "fleet" to be proud of. Good luck to you and your colleagues.
That is pretty cool to preserve as historical vessel.. work on those early post war research vessels was pretty important and tough. Germany had a pretty similar vessel with first "Anton Dorn" also with steam but oil fired.
Thats very interesting, I never knew about that vessel. A little googling took me to some interesting pages. She was in service about the same time we were, so I imagine they would have done similar work
Great work - she’s saved thanks to some good proactive volunteers with some experience behind them - fascinating- keep up the good work / not many steam ships left now 😃
Good luck to you Sir and your passion! I wish I could help with this historic project! Wish you all success!
Lovely to see ,I just hope there is enough local and public interest to finance the restoration and safeguard the future of the ship and it becomes a attraction to Leith as it was once a fishing port.
Hardly anyone knows we're here. Even folk that have lived locally all their lives had no idea. You've got to go through security to get to us, sort of stops people just dropping by. That puts alot of people off. We're trying to raise awareness in the local community, and the harbour say we can have a more publicly accessible birth once we're up to a better standard. We can't achieve that without public interaction and a steady income. Its quite a vicious circle we're stuck in.
I have a mate who comes from near Edinburgh, and we keep on about coming up from Portsmouth. I would love to come and visit the ship one of these days when we do head to Scotland. I have a genuine period correct electric Burco water heater in fantastic condition that I would like to donate to one of the messes, pantrys or the galley, wherever it serves best as a little gift when we visit. My late father was an apprentice draughtsman for Vosper-Thorneycroft as a lad and continued to work for there for a couple of decades on the stabiliser department until he left, my early memories include going on sea trails between the markers in the Solent on a new MTB and seeing big ships being launched, trips round the yards , offices and behind the scenes tours on Navy days. At age 60, I'm just considering getting my first boat, which may sound daft but if I can only do 5 or 10 years retirement on the water, it's better than not doing it at all. Can't wait to get to Scotland for even more reason now!
Your father must have had some interesting stories from his time in the yards.
We'd love to welcome you aboard for a tour when you're in the area, contact through the Facebook page or the website to arrange it any time you like.
I used to work for forth ports and was in and out of leith on one of their dredgers, always wondered about this old boat
That was really interesting though sad to see it decaying like that, thank you.
Went to explore an ex Royal Mail steamer at night once that had been busted for cocaine.Its turbines had seized is how they got caught(what luck!)Couldnt get over how ornate some parts of it was,even the steps on the engine room ladders(stairs)were decoraritive and ornate!The engine room was dark and looked like the pit of hell.Little bitty thing,maybe 150 ft in length. tops.Sunk for a artificial reef by the authorities.That was in 1981.
Those "A" frames the warp for the net went through are called gallows brackets. The focsle or pointy end of the vessel as you put it is the whale back on a trawler.
Yep, I referred to them as gallows, in the other video I think, calling them A frames is something that got picked up from other volunteers and I think it just stuck with me.
As for "pointy end" that was a running gag from my time at sea, I had a skipper that referred to the bow as the pointy end when giving inductions to people aboard and it made its way into being one of those things you say around your mates without thinking.
I've seen it referred to as the whale back by a former crew member while going through some old photos, I didn't realise it was called that on a trawler, and just used focsle as a standard term. Good to know otherwise.
It’s nice to see the dedication of people giving up there time to preserve a piece of history.but as you say without a massive cash injection.it’s going to be a struggle.
I think in the long term you can only generate the finances to keep a ship like this intact if she gets to go out and make a living hauling tourists around as a living history experience with a Steamship etc. Of course nothing about this is easy, but if you guys manage, it will be very rewarding. There are plenty of examples of non-profit groups running historical stuff (from ships to tanks to railways to aircraft) with the tourism industry and thus having the finances to keep it together. Its a big step and not an easy thing to do, but with stationary museum ships the decay seems to be inevitable. The adventure tourism has future. I would not ever go on a normal cruise ship, even if the trip would be free, but to go on an overnight trip with a ship like yours, I would be glad to pay for that. BTW, my own hobby is aircraft restoration. More Regards from Alaska!
We'd love nothing more than to be able to get her out to sea again, we're struggling to raise the funds to just get her into dry dock for stabilisation works, she'd need much much more than that to go back to sea, the certification would cost more than that alone and the boiler hasn't seen pressure in 30+ years, all the hull fittings are plated over and much of the original machinery is missing or far beyond use. I absolutely agree, it would be great to get her to sea, but it absolutely won't be happening any time soon unfortunately. We need to walk before we can run, and we're barley crawling at the moment.
What's it like below the water line? We had the Shieldhall in Southampton for years and we have a near century old steam tug
As far as we know, fairly sound. With the hull being reinforced, it's stood up well over the years. We did a thickness test a couple of years ago and it wasn't too bad. There's also no water ingress anywhere through the hull. We still need to get her into dry dock for a more comprehensive look though.
Joined a survey ship in Hull 88.... there was a trawler called the Artic Cavalier...big trawler...the lights were on so i assume it was still in use.
Renamed to Arctic Corsair in 1993. She's a museum ship at the moment by the looks of things. That's our long term goal with Explorer too.
If every sidewinder and or stern trawler-man gave £20 as an annual subscription that would be a start. Design a Logo, something outstanding and memorable like mine on the left, seafarers would pay to belong to the Association. Something like the Pisces two fish. With an anchor in the middle. Ask all the schools in fishing towns to submit drawings with a prise of (something Worthwhile) presented on board by the local Mayor, get the news papers involved.
We have an annual subscription programme running, but it's been met with limited success. Following the links in the video description will take you to the correct pages if you wanted to have a look. We also have branded merchandise and a team getting us into as many forms of media as possible. Unfortunately, people aren't keen on helping "a rusty old boat" so we struggle along with what we can scrape together.
😢 sad that the ship is neglected.
This looks very much like a Richard Irvin trawler .
She's an Alexander Hall trawler, built 1954-1955, up in Aberdeen, yard number 747. My mind drew a full on blank when trying to recall that at the beginning of the video, but it gets confirmed later on, with certification in the officers saloon. I'm definitely going to do some reading up on Richard Irvin trawlers though, thanks for mentioning it
Off to the ship breakers.
would it be worth it to restore?
Maybe not to some people, but maybe to people in the area with an interest in maritime history and the research work she did, some of which is still referred to, to this day
CAN SOMEONE ACTUALLY TELL ME WHO IS GOING TO BE PAYING FOR THIS RESTORATION ?.
I am so sorry to bring to your attention, from your Video I could not confirm it, BUT I don't think that is a triple expansion, there looks to be 5 Cylinders and Pistons: if I'm right she is extremely unusual and that engine is worth a fortune in historic value, please get one of your team to confirm it either way.
Can confirm she is triple expansion. With a low, intermediate and high pressure cylinder. I'm far from an expert on steam, the engine rooms I worked in were brand new and full of diesel machinery, but some of the guys aboard are and they all refer to her as triple expansion. Well spotted that there appears to be five cylinders when viewed from above, something I missed myself. I will have to speak to one of the engineers and confirm why she appears that way.
Interesting tour, but the constant fast panning of the camera makes it hard to watch.
Noted, thanks for the feedback. First time filming such a video so there was bound to be a few things not quite right
Sad… once it was a vessel with everything working, clean, people living in it…alive!!!!
So true
Was once a lovely living ship. Now sadly too far gone. Will cost millions to put right😢
Agreed. She's too far gone to ever go back to sea. The goal is to open her up as a floating museum. Just to get her into dry dock for stabilisation works will be a huge chunk of cash
Plenty of money for supporting immigrants and weapons for far away wars tho 🫡
@@scottdickinson1130 have you applied for lottery funding?
@@GeorgeLittle-ft2yx we've applied for all sorts of funding, including lottery funding. Because of her location in a working harbour, and because of the condition she's in, people aren't all that enthusiastic about funding us. Forth Ports say we can have a publicly accessible birth, once she's up to scratch, which would make it substantially easier to raise funds, but we can't move her until she's in better condition, which takes funding. It's a viscous circle we're stuck in and trying to break out of.
@@scottdickinson1130 catch 22 situation 👀
Oh God let the old girl pass...If you want a place to hang out buy some land and make a club house...
Those are the decisions that are far out of my control, unfortunately. I'm just showing people what's there at the moment
Omg! You keep saying the same thing over and over again. We can watch and you can keep quiet
Yeah, imagine saying the same thing over and over again?
Yeah, imagine saying the same thing over and over again?
Yeah, imagine saying the same thing over and over again?
Yeah, imagine saying the same thing over and over again?
I know, right? Imagine talking about a ship in a video about a ship...
How about a “ Go Fund Me “ page?! Good luck!
We've had various Go Fund Me pages over the years and they've been met with minimal success. Pages that ran for months saw less than £50 in donations. There isn't an active fund raising page at the moment because of this. There is an option to donate via our website, linked in the description: www.theexplorer.scot/donate
CAN SOMEONE ACTUALLY TELL ME WHO IS GOING TO BE PAYING FOR THIS RESTORATION ?.
We have funding applications into various organisations, we take donations from anybody that wants to make them, and all labour at the moment is provided free of charge, by a dedicated team of volunteers.