SV Tenacious
Launched in 2000, Sailing Vessel Tenacious is the largest wooden tall ship built in the United Kingdom in the last 100 years. It is 65 metres (213.25 feet) long including bowsprit, and it is rigged as a (three-masted) barque with two mizzen gaffs. Its deck is 49.85 metres long, its hull is 54.02 metres long, and it has a beam of 10.6 metres at its widest point. A press release from the Belfast Maritime Festival on 22 June 2006 announced that the "Tenacious" was "the largest wooden ship still afloat".
"Tenacious" displaces about 714 tons (summer draft). Its maiden voyage was on 1 September 2000 from Southampton to Southampton calling at Sark, St Helier and Weymouth. The ship is owned by a UK-based charity, the Jubilee Sailing Trust, which also owns the 42-metre-long tall ship STS "Lord Nelson" (length including bowsprit is 55 metres and waterline length is 37 metres). "Tenacious" featured in the first series of Channel 5's Sea Patrol UK, when one of the crew members had fallen ill and needed to be winched into an RAF Westland Sea King and taken to hospital. Due to the height of the masts and rigging, this posed a challenge to the helicopter's pilot and winch crew but the rescue attempt was successful and the crew member survived a potentially fatal condition.
History
When completed in 2000, it was the largest wooden ship to be built in the UK for over 100 years. The ship was built by the Jubilee Sailing Trust (JST) and, along with the STS Lord Nelson, the pair are the only tall ships in the world that were built so that both disabled and non-disabled people can sail as crew, not passengers.