2021 Boats

Reaper is a Fifie Sailing Herring Drifter, the most popular design of fishing boat on the East Coast of Scotland for the greater part of the 19th and early 20th Centuries.

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Since 1975, the Reaper has been part of the Scottish Fisheries Museum collection and has traveled all over Scotland delivering outreach and attending countless festivals. You may also recognise the Reaper from the TV show Outlander.

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Learn More: 

http://www.scotfishmuseum.org/the-story-of-reaper.php

White Wing is a 33-foot Baldie, a variety of the Fifie lugsail design popular on the East coast of Scotland. She was built in 1917 by Jas. Cadger at Gardenstown for John Ritchie of Whitehills, Banffshire.

 

In May 2001 White Wing was a member of the flotilla which celebrated the re-opening of the Forth & Clyde Canal and was the first vessel to complete a round trip of the re-opened canal.

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Learn More:  

http://www.scotfishmuseum.org/white-wing-me-113.php

The Fifie Swan LK 243 was launched in May 1900 at Hay and Company’s yard in Lerwick, Shetland. She was regarded as “one of the finest fishing boats afloat in the North of Scotland”. 

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The Swan began her new life as a sail training vessel in 1998. In her first year, she did 40 trips and carried 450 trainees on board. Since then she has become a familiar sight not only in Shetland waters but also in the fjords of Norway and off the Faroese coast each year.

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Learn More:  

https://www.swantrust.com/about/history

Historic Fishing Vessel, Fruitful KY 40 built by James N Miller's of St Monans for John Deas and Watson Bowman in 1955

 

Richard Wemyss, the current owner, bought the Fruitful in Shetland and moved home to Cellardyke. While waiting for a weather window to bring her home, she broke her moorings, Scalloway harbour phoned Richard to tell him she had been washed ashore and holed. Part of her gunnels was lifted off in the saving of her. She was lifted out two days later and a week later brought back to Anstruther. While waiting on the pier to go into the boatyard at the Scottish Fisheries Museum, I have stripped her back, removing wheelhouse, winch, rubber sheeting and protective belting for clams, huge fuel tanks, and rotten upper planks. She is to get new stem posts, all waterways removed, the top part of frames to be doubled up, and new waterways. Engine room hatch and cockpit, to return her to her original appearance. The mast will be on a tabernacle, but she will be rigged to sail with a dipping lug.

Favorite was formerly a seine net fishing boat, built in 1947 by Walter Reekie at St Monance in Fife. She started her working life at Castletown, Isle of Man, in the hands of Jackie Maddrell and his sons; she was then known as “Margaret Anna” and carried the number CT101. 

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In February 2006, her working life came to an end but her rarity was recognised by members of North East Maritime Trust; being one of the last survivors of her type. Favourite was restored in 2007 under the supervision of Tyneside’s last wooden boatbuilder Fred Crowell, in his boatyard at South Shields.

Built in 1947 by James Weatherhead at Eyemouth, Rachel Douglas is a fishing vessel of wooden carvel construction with a Gardner diesel engine. Her first owners were Jackie and Thom Baxter-Douglas of Seahouses, Northumberlandfrom which port she worked until the early 60s when sold to John Wilson and taken to his home port of St Abbs. She was later purchased from his son Ian in 2002 for restoration by three persons with a concern for fishing heritage.

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RACHEL DOUGLAS is a rare survivor of a medium-sized fishing vessel of the mid-twentieth century. She is typical of large quantities of boats built around Scotland and northeast England for inshore fishing and is not dissimilar to those built elsewhere around the British Isles. 

Henry Frederick Swan is a 40 ft self-righting motor lifeboat. Work started on building her in 1915 at the Cowes yard of S.E. Saunders. She entered service on 16 February 1918. She remained on station until 1939 when she was replaced by a more modern vessel; she then went into reserve. However, in 1941 an enemy bomb landed on the lifeboat station destroying the new boat, and HENRY FREDERICK SWAN was brought back for further service, continuing to undertake rescue duties until 1947.

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Henry Frederick Swan is now displayed and operated on the water close to her original workplace, conveying to the public how lifesaving was undertaken on the Tyne nearly 100 years ago. She is moored by the waterfront of Corporation Quay, South Shields.

 

 

The Manx Beauty is a 50ft wooden ring-net fishing boat that was built on the harbour side (Bulwark) at Cellardyke in Fife in 1937. Within days of her launch she arrived in Peel to take part in the herring fishing from the Isle of Man. 

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She has spent her entire working life in the fishing industry and is now a very rare surviving example of a pre-war fishing boat. For the last 50 years, she was owned by the Maddocks, a fishing family of Birkenhead. Then, when the family decided to put her up for sale in late 2019, she was bought on behalf of the Cellardyke Trust and in February 2020, returned to Fife by road.