Keep the Reaper Sailing
The Scottish Fisheries Museum is launching an appeal to support essential winter maintenance for its flagship historic sailing Fifie, the ‘Reaper’. Five years on from a major conservation project, the striking traditional vessel needs a full service to keep her in tip-top condition.
The ‘Reaper’ FR958 is an iconic traditional fishing boat and member of the National Historic Fleet.* Crewed and maintained by volunteers at the Scottish Fisheries Museum, she brings heritage and tradition to every port she visits. To keep sailing, however, she needs essential maintenance work this winter. The hull is sound but without replacing the caulking, it will not be watertight and the boat will be unable to sail.
Therefore, the Museum has partnered with Big Give, an online platform that enables charities like the Scottish Fisheries Museum Trust to match fund campaigns and so to make the most of their fundraising efforts.
The ‘Reaper’ needs professional attention at a working boatyard with the expertise and facilities to care for a wooden vessel of this age. A survey has shown the extent of the work needed and the Museum is confident that this will ensure that the boat returns to sea in 2025.
Meeting the fundraising target will ensure that this nationally significant historic vessel is maintained for the future, in seaworthy condition, and able to sail to various ports and harbours on the Scottish coast, and beyond, throughout the summer seasons of 2025/6.
It will also safeguard intangible cultural heritage by supporting the development and transfer of the traditional skills and knowledge of wooden boatbuilding, sailing and crewing, creating volunteering and employment opportunities in the heritage craft sector in Scotland.
Moreover, it will enable the Museum to educate and inform the public about Scotland maritime heritage by touring the boat to various harbours and hosting interactive visits for schools and opportunities for the public to climb aboard and experience how fishermen in the past lived and worked at sea.
Launching the campaign, Linda Fitzpatrick, Head Curator of the Scottish Fisheries Museum, says:
“Conservation of a seagoing historic vessel like the ‘Reaper’ is always ongoing and this will be the first time that the boat has been out of the water since her return from Rosyth over five years ago. Because of that work, and the daily efforts of our volunteers ever since, only now does the ‘Reaper’ need servicing and re-caulking to get her back to sea.
“We are immensely grateful to our pledgers for their support of the ‘Reaper’ through our funding platform ‘Big Give’ which means that every £1 donated between now and February will be doubled. We hope that this will encourage donors to support the campaign to enable the ‘Reaper’ to continue to engage the public with maritime heritage, keep cultural heritage and skills alive, and preserve a working traditional boat under sail.”
