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HMS Unicorn
His Majesty’s Frigate Unicorn, of 46 guns, was built for the Royal Navy in the Royal Dockyard at Chatham and launched in 1824, and is the sixth oldest ship in the world and the only preserved warship in Scotland. HMS Unicorn spent her early years in reserve or ‘ordinary’ in the south of England and was brought to Dundee in 1873 to serve as the reserve training ship for the Tay. She carried out this function for nearly a century, and also acted as the headquarters ship for the Senior Naval Officer in Dundee during both World Wars. Unicorn remained unrigged and under the cover of a roof her entire working life, and the roof which now covers Unicorn’s upper deck is believed to be the same one which was fitted immediately after her launch.
Site News: April 19, 2024
The vessel database has been updated and is now holding 92,229 vessel histories (with 15,629 images and 13,195 records of ship wrecks and marine disasters). The mariner and naval biography database has also been updated and now contains 58,616 entries (with 4,013 images).
In 2023 the Nauticapedia celebrated the 50th Anniversary of it’s original inception in 1973 (initially it was on 3" x 5" file cards). It has developed, expanded, digitized and enlarged in those ensuing years to what it is now online. If it was printed out it would fill more than 300,000 pages!
My special thanks to our volunteer IT adviser, John Eyre, who (since 2021) has modernized, simplified and improved the update process for the databases into a semi–automated processes. His participation has been vital to keeping the Nauticapedia available to our netizens.
Also my special thanks to my volunteer content accuracy checker, John Spivey of Irvine CA USA, who has proofread thousands of Nauticapedia vessel histories and provided input to improve more than 11,000 entries. His attention to detail has been a huge unexpected bonus in improving and updating the vessel detail content.