RRS Discovery awarded £50,000 in honour of explorer Henry Worsley
Melanie May | 26 May 2017 | News
The Headley Trust has awarded £50,000 to the Dundee Heritage Trust for the Royal Research Ship Discovery, in memory of explorer Henry Worsley who died last year.
The funds will be used for Dundee Heritage Trust‘s critical conservation work on the RRS Discovery: Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s Antarctic expedition ship.
Worsley died in January 2016 after falling 30 miles short of a 940-mile solo walk across Antarctica. He was following in the footsteps of his hero, Ernest Shackleton, whose Antarctic expeditions included one with Scott on RRS Discovery.
RRS Discovery, now docked in Dundee, has been undergoing critical restoration work to its masts and rigging through a specialist shipbuilding company in Gloucester. The restoration project will cost approximately £350,000, for which a major fundraising drive is currently underway including the Trust’s first crowdfunding campaign last November which raised more than £40,000. The masts and rigging will be back on Discovery in time for the summer.
Paul Jennings, executive director of Dundee Heritage Trust, said:
“We are extremely grateful to The Headley Trust for awarding us this money, which will go a long way towards helping us with our current rigging conservation project, and to improving the whole visitor experience. The fact that the money was awarded to us in honour of Henry Worsley, as intrepid an explorer as Scott and his crew, makes it poignant, yet fitting.”
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About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.