RRS Discovery, Dundee

On 16 March 1900, construction began in Dundee of the last wooden three-masted ship to be built in the British Isles – RRS Discovery. Launched into the Firth of Tay a year later, Discovery was designed for Antarctic research, and her first mission was to carry Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton, key figures in the "Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration", on their initial, remarkably successful journey to the Antarctic, otherwise known as the National Antarctic Expedition.

Five months after setting sail, Discovery sighted the Antarctic coastline, which Scott charted for the next month. The crew weighed anchor in McMurdo Sound where the ship remained, locked in ice, for the next two years. Despite this setback the expedition successfully determined that Antarctica was indeed a continent and relocated the Southern Magnetic Pole (which moves north west by about 10 to 15 kilometres per year).

Discovery arrived back in Britain in 1904, and spent the next 82 years touring the world in various roles, including charting the migration patterns of whale stocks, carrying munitions to Russia, and acting as the headquarters of the 16th Stepney Sea Scouts.

In 1986 Discovery returned to the City of Dundee where she was built, and has since become the centrepiece of the Discovery Point visitor centre, berthed in her own custom-built dock.