Name Result

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.

Built by Paul Rodgers of Carrickfergus Shipyard in collaboration with Thomas Ashburner & Co and her future captain Robert Wright, RESULT’s design blended function with graceful features that can still be seen in her fabric today.  In her original form she represented the highest technical development of the coastal schooner but has subsequently undergone continuous modifications in response to changing economic and political circumstances. Her First World War service is evidenced through a piece of her hull damaged during a U-boat encounter.  This has survived showing the entry point and has been removed from the ship for display in a nearby gallery.

In 1979, conservation work was undertaken by Harland & Wolff to return the vessel to her original 1893 specification which included reducing the hatchways to their original dimensions, fitting smaller steel coamings, removing a wheelhouse added in 1946, as well as the engine, propeller and the plating of the propeller aperture.  She has remained largely stripped out with her rig removed since. Some original fittings survive, and some internal fittings have been replicated, including the wheelhouse. Other parts, such as the bunk beds, are in poor condition.  The lower decks are in poor condition with areas unsafe and at risk of collapse. The hull form is at build with no changes to its shape, other than an entry point cut into one of the plates in the bottom to enable access from the ground.

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

Associations with people or places.  Off-ship research.

RESULT was the first metal ship built by Paul Rodgers, a renowned boat-builder, but she was then completed by Robert Kent & Co after Rodgers went bankrupt. She has strong associations with Ireland, the Isle of Man and Furness where she traded during her early life and is now the last remaining Ulster built ship of the hundreds that plied their trade around the coasts of Britain and Ireland and were once of such importance to coastal communities.  RESULT is iconic for many, having been a regular sight in Belfast Lough at the turn of the century and is remembered as the largest ship ever to have entered the port of Braunton, North Devon in 1909 when she was purchased by a local consortium of ship owners.

Her role as a decoy or ‘Q’ ship in the First World War gives her both national and international significance.  She encountered her first two U-boats within a 24-hour period in March 1917.  Having hit and damaged the conning tower of the first, she subsequently suffered damage to her sails and rigging, the foresail receiving thirteen hits. In April 1917 she encountered another submarine and was hit amidships by a shell which set the magazine on fire.  Her post-war life saw continued operations as a trading ship with links across the Bristol Channel, the South Coast and as far afield as the Channel Islands and French Channel ports. She remained operational during the Second World War and carried cargo in the coastal and home trades until 1967, by which time she had become the last vessel of her type to be registered at a British port. 

RESULT exemplifies Ireland’s trading legacy with her connections to commerce, human endeavour and conflict.  She has left a lasting memory with many of those who engaged with her, not least the Welch family who owned her for over thirty years as a family trading business and fondly recall her use as a family home during the summer.  Written accounts of RESULT's Q-ship service survive and there are numerous photographs documenting her life as well as plans.  She was also featured in the 1951 Carol Reed film ‘Outcast of the Islands’. RESULT was added to the National Register of Historic Vessels in 1996 with the status of being on 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?

RESULT's lines were more graceful and yacht-like than many schooners because her design was the work of Richard Ashburner, a yacht designer, and Paul Rodgers, who built highly regarded yachts. With her counter stern and clipper bows, plus her distinctive sheer line, she was aesthetically pleasing.  Built for speed, she was one of the fastest of the later schooners and her transition to auxiliary sail reflected her owners’ successful efforts to work her profitably within rapidly changing patterns of transport and distribution. As the coastal trade involved working into tidal harbours and estuaries, she was specially strengthened for loading aground.

In March 1914 she was fitted with an auxiliary engine to improve her profitability. and her square topsails and yards were removed. On being requisitioned by the Admiralty in January 1917 she was converted into a decoy ship, and armed with two 12 pounder guns, fore and aft of the mainmast, a 6 pounder gun forward and two fixed 14 inch torpedo tubes aft. Her square topsails were reinstated by the Navy. Post-1917 RESULT was returned to her owners who once again removed the square topsails, though they were later reinstated. From then on RESULT traded as a motor ketch. In 1946 she was refitted, her hatches were enlarged to facilitate cargo handling, a new larger engine was fitted, her topmasts were removed and a wheelhouse added on deck. Her mainmast was also later removed and she continued as an auxiliary ketch with her hold partially converted into passenger accommodation.

RESULT is now a static exhibit, located out of the water in the grounds of the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum at Cultra, near Belfast, where she was built. She has been on display in a purpose-built cradle outside the galleries since 1979 looking out towards Belfast Lough where she once sailed.  Despite being displayed with minimal interpretation and no rig, as a museum exhibit, she still portrays the history of the coastal and Irish Sea merchant sailing trade.

Author:

Clare Ablett 17/2/22