Name Feasible

1.      What is the vessel’s ability to demonstrate history in her physical fabric?

Evidence for designs, functions, techniques, processes, styles, customs and habits or uses and associations in relation to events and people.  How early, intact or rare these features are may impact on significance.

FEASIBLE was built as a steam drifter for herring fishing, and she still has her original steam winches and derricks. Her riveted steel hull is also original. There have however been a large number of modifications in welded steel since, including bulwarks, hatch, and a large deckhouse in place of the engine room. FEASIBLE has three decks and she was originally fitted with two masts. She was later converted to a side trawler, and then to diesel propulsion with a 3-cylinder Kromhout 2-stroke diesel, a clutch and a controllable-pitch propeller. This engine was subsequently replaced, first with a diesel Bruvnoll 3-cylinder 220 horse-power engine and then with a Rolls Royce engine from a trawler. There were plans to return her to steam propulsion, but in 2007, her engine was given back to its country of origin, Norway, for use in the Bruvnoll Museum.   

2.      What are the vessel’s associational links for which there is no physical evidence?

Associations with people or places.  Off-ship research.

FEASIBLE has Scottish associations, being built in 1912 by John Duthie of Aberdeen. She is significant for being called up for service in both World Wars, and was engaged in incidents around the British Isles and beyond during her working life. In the First World War she was requisitioned for use as a patrol boat and in 1917 took part in the sinking of U-48 in the North Sea, during which she took one prisoner on board.  Once demobilised, she went back to herring fishing, later suffering damage in four separate accidents in North Holland, Scotland, Ireland and Pembrokeshire, losing a crewman on the last occasion in heavy seas. During the Second World War, FEASIBLE was again requisitioned by the Admiralty, this time as a minesweeper. She took part in the Dunkirk Evacuation 1940, picking up soldiers from smaller vessels who were ferrying them out from the beaches, and her engineer, A.A. Storr, was later decorated with the Distinguished Service Medal. On one of her returns to Ramsgate FEASIBLE was bombed and disabled. After the Second World War, she was sold to Norway, where she was operated as a coaster and given the name MELOY after an island above the Arctic Circle. She has been recorded on the National Register of Historic Vessels since 1997 and is part of the National Historic Fleet.

3.      How does the vessel’s shape or form combine and contribute to her function?

Overall aesthetic impact of the vessel, her lines, material she was built from and her setting.  Does she remain in her working environment?

The steam drifter, of which FEASIBLE is a rare surviving example, represented the vanguard of the transformation of the British fishing fleet from sail to steam.  Very early steam drifters were wooden and some were converted sailing vessels.  The purpose-built boats were a rather different shape, but their immediate ancestry in the world of sail is very obvious.  Drifters lay for hours at a time to lines of nets of immense length and because of the often poor conditions, it was essential that they could keep their bows fully up to the approaching seas.  To assist this process, draught was greater aft than forward, without compromising the buoyancy and power of the bow sections.  Steam drifters featured a rudimentary form of the old sailing rig; most drifters had been luggers with big foremasts set well forward in the bows.  These, if left standing, created sufficient windage to compromise the boat’s ability to lie head to wind.  The masts, some of which weighed up to a ton, were therefore lowered at sea each night as the boats lay to the nets.  On sailing boats, they were lowered into a crutch which was shipped in massive brackets well aft.  On steam drifters the masts would be lowered into a stout chock situated at the forward end of the wheelhouse roof.  Ample evidence for this practice is provided by contemporary photographs.  The fairlead arrangements were of great interest, as were the steam capstans that allowed crews to lower the massive masts and handle the colossal weight of nets.  Much of this detail on FEASIBLE appears to have been subsumed by the conversions which have marked her life, but there is no mistaking the distinctive shape of her powerful hull.  FEASIBLE is currently undergoing conservation work at Bristol.

Source: NHS-UK team, 26 January 2016. 

This statement was developed as part of the Heritage Lottery funded First World War project. http://www.ww1britainssurvivingvessels.org.uk/