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 an award-winning conservation project, the striking traditional vessel needs a full service to keep her in tip-top condition.
Reaper FR958 is an iconic traditional fishing boat and listed on 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.
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.
About Reaper
Built for William Buchan of Fraserburgh by J&G Forbes Boatyard in nearby Sandhaven, Reaper FR958 was registered for drift net and great line fishing in 1903 and went on to spend 50 years serving the herring industry there and in Shetland.
Inspired by Viking longship design and powered by wind alone with their huge, heavy, square lugsails stretching over 3,355sq ft and sleek hulls, ‘Fifies’ became the most popular fishing vessel on Scotland’s North Sea coast during the 19th and 20th centuries.
Although ‘Fifies’ looked effortless and graceful when under sail, leaving harbour and turning with the sun in long-held tradition, managing the heavy gear and herring nets, which extended a mile long, was physically demanding and skilled work for the crew of ‘8 men and a boy’.
On shore, the Reaper, which held the Shetland record for a catch of 223 crans (almost 250,000 herring) in the 1930s, supported various industries. These included the ‘Herring Lassies’ who gutted 60 herrings a minute on the gutting tables or ‘farlans’ before packing them in salted barrels for export to Europe.
The £1m conservation of the two-masted, 70 foot, 50 tonne Reaper, began in 2018. In 2020 the project won the prestigious Martyn Heighton Award for Excellence in Maritime Conservation at the 2020 National Historic Ships UK Awards.
Following conservation, Reaper reopened to the public, at her mooring in Anstruther Harbour. In 2023 she resumed her visits to other ports, undertaking a full programme in 2024 that saw her sail as far north as Portsoy and south to Whitby.
Keep the Reaper Sailing
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.”
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.
Read more and donate: https://donate.biggive.org/campaign/a05WS000001eD7dYAE
For more information, visit www.scotfishmuseum.org
The Scottish Fisheries Museum is our Shipshape Network Scotland Hub.
