The Carrickfergus Tall Ship Project

The Result has lived many lives from being a workhorse, a film star and a warrior. The Carrickfergus Tall Ship Project aims to bring home and preserve the historic tall ship Result. Once home we have a vision of static adaptive reuse which would see her become a flexible venue for living history experiences, education and events benefiting both visitors and the local community alike. We are curren

tly engaged in discussions with the ship’s owners National Museums Northern Ireland and other potential stakeholders. For much of its history Carrickfergus Harbour would have been described as a forest of masts. This was largely because local commerce was for thousands of years transported around our coasts from community to community by small sailing ships. In the late 19th century, the predominant type of sailing ship in these trades was the schooner. At this time Carrickfergus shipbuilder Paul Rodgers had a great reputation for his schooner designs. His shipyard on the Belfast Road (today the site of Legg Park with Rodgers’ cottage still in existence beside it) was a small but modest business which at its height employed 150 men. In 1893 the yard launched for Barrow owners a schooner named the Result. She could sail fast and without ballast, her hull was specially strengthened for loading and unloading aground in tidal harbours or estuaries. Like all coastal traders, Result was a jack of all trades carrying various cargoes over her long career at sea like bricks, tiles, scrap metal, bauxite, coffins, lime, mistletoe, coal and fertiliser to name a few. She traded to a range of ports around Britain and Ireland and even to a few Continental European ports. The onset of the First World War placed merchant shipping in grave danger with more than 200 British and Irish schooners and small sailing ships lost to enemy action. It was too expensive for German U-boats to use torpedoes on small ships and therefore they would attack by surfacing and then shelling the targeted ship. However, U-boats on the surface were vulnerable, and with this in mind the Royal Navy conceived the idea of the Q-ship. Named as such as the first ships were converted in Queenstown, today Cobh in County Cork. A few inoffensive-looking merchant ships were requisitioned and armed. This armament was camouflaged, so that U-boats would be lured to the surface where they themselves could be attacked. To aid the deception, only five men would appear on deck at any one time, to represent the usual crew compliment of a trading schooner. Result was chosen and converted in Lowestoft for patrols in the North Sea. She had an all-volunteer crew as was usually the case with crowded and uncomfortable small ships. The men were offered extra wages rightly termed ‘danger money’. There were 23 men on board who were keen to serve even though they had been warned that their posting would be “hazardous, at times monotonous, and not free from discomfort”. During 1917 Result fought three different U-boats. In her third and final battle she was hit by a shell midships injuring two crew and nearly sinking her. In 1950 Result was chartered to appear the Carol Reed directed film Outcast of the Islands, adapted from the Joseph Conrad novel. It received a BAFTA nomination for ‘Best British Film’ in 1953. None of the actors ever came aboard Result instead the crew were required to stand in for them by dressing up and wearing make-up to colour their skin. They were paid an extra £2 per day for this. Despite the good pay the crew were grateful once filming was complete as they much preferred their ‘day jobs’. Work was becoming increasingly difficult to find in the 1960s as the coastal trade declined. It was now cheaper to transport goods overland by road with motor lorries. Result had become the last ship of her type still in sailing however by 1967 there was not enough cargo available to keep her in work. With Result’s retirement ended a thousand-year-old tradition of man trading goods along our coastlines by sail. In 1970 she was acquired for preservation by the Ulster Transport Museum and is on open air display there. Her importance is recognised by National Historic Ships UK as part of the ‘National Historic Fleet’ – the collection of the most historically significant ships in the UK.