Name STS Tenacious Laid down 6 June 1996 Status Operational Construction started 6 June 1996 Beam 11 m Builder Southampton | Owner Jubilee Sailing Trust Commissioned 1 September 2000 Length 65 m Launched 3 February 2000 Tons burthen 531,600 kg | |
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Draught 4.58 m (15.0 ft) in summer | ||
The STS Tenacious is a modern British wooden sail training ship, specially designed in the 1990s to accommodate anyone over 16 with a disability.
History
Launched in 2000, SV 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 June 22, 2006 announced that the Tenacious was "the largest wooden ship still afloat".
The 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).
The Tenacious featured in the first episode 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.
