In carrying out this object the Trust:

• Sponsors the International Register of Historic Ships.
• Encourages national organisations to preserve such ships.
• Provides an international focus for information on ship status and preservation.
• Encourages study, research and exchange of information on ship and maritime history and conservation.
• Awards its prestigious International Maritime Heritage Medal and citation for outstanding examples of historic ship restoration and preservation.

Makes awards for outstanding services to historic ships.

Administration

The Trust is managed by an international Council comprising Vice Presidents, Trustees and Advisors. Income from subscriptions and donations is used to cover operating expenses, while income from The Frank Carr Memorial Fund is used for specific purposes.

Members

Currently, the Trust has members in some 40 countries. Their enthusiasm and dedication, their contribution to the collection and distribution of information, financial support and sheer determination to preserve the historic ships of the world, are all important to the success of the Trust.

Please join us in saving the world's heritage of historic ships.

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The Iconoclast, Nine Elms Pier, Tideway Walk,

London, SW8 5PZ

Telephone 020-7627 1550

World Ship Trust

HMS Implacable survivor of the Battle of Trafalgar was scuttled 145 years later because she was regarded as past restoring. The World Ship Trust needs your help to ensure that important vessels of our international sea heritage are saved.

Much of the description of our work which follows was written by the late Hammond Innes, a Vice President of the Trust until his death in 1998.

He said that if you or he had been there the day the Navy deliberately towed HMS Implacable (formerly the French Duguay-Trouin), their last wooden line of battle two-decker, out to sea and fired charges that sent her to the bottom off Spithead [England], we would have wept tears of anger and bitterness to see such a fine example of our naval heritage deliberately sunk before our eyes. But we were not there. We did not even know about it - or about the more prosaic deaths of so many other vessels left to rot their guts out, some of them vessels of great importance, like the SS Great Britain left as a storage hulk stranded on the Falklands - she at least, with all Brunel's "firsts," has been saved, thanks to a few dedicated and determined people.

Frank Carr, director of the National Maritime Museum at the time of the scuttling, was one of those who felt strongly that the time had come to bring the fate of this vessel, and others in jeopardy, to a wider audience. His cry of "Never Again!" referred not only to his fervent wish that such a shameful act would never be repeated, but the face that no foot would ever again tread those historic decks was an irreparable loss. As a result of his endeavours, the World Ship Trust was founded in 1979.

You may have been over the SS Great Britain, now restored to the original condition in which she left from the very dock at Bristol where she now lies, or you may have been over Cutty Sark at Greenwich, or seen the four centuries of old shell of the Mary Rose raised in the Solent, or Warrior refitted at Hartlepool now lying at Portsmouth, or Belfast lying in the Thames. Or you may, like me, have been over Victory as a child and been given a sliver of her original oak timbering.

These ships have been saved and the maintenance costs largely met by their visitors. And not just in Britain. Vessels like the US frigate Constitution built in 1797, the steel square-rigger Balclutha in San Francisco, the Vasa in Stockholm, the Jylland in Denmark, those marvellous Viking ships at Bygdøy outside Oslo, with Nansen's Fram close by, refitted like Scott's Discovery now in Dundee - these ships, and others around the world, earn their keep.

The face that they do so is important. They earn their keep, or most of it. Thus members of the World Ship Trust are not involved in the preservation of unwanted relics of a bygone age. But the Point Prince Philip made in a message to the World Ship Trust shortly after its foundation still holds true today:

"Much effort and concentration is lavished on the preservation of great and historic buildings. The same cannot be said for historic ships . . . The coming of the machine age put an end to thousands of years of wooden sail-driven ships and the development of modern technology has been so rapid that the first generation of combined engine-and-sail ships has already disappeared."

It is to save the best of the world's seagoing past, which goes back far beyond the invention of the wheel for land transportation, that we ask you to join the World Ship Trust - and as early as possible. In the short period of its existence the Trust has done a great deal.

The International Register of Historic Ships, now in its 3rd edition. has no less that 2,000 ships from 72 countries, over 1,200 photographs and a wealth of detail. It also includes vessels of considerable historic value which should be preserved but have not so far been acquired by any museum or maritime preservation group. It shows where they are lying, their condition and their historic importance, and it is hoped that readers may feel stimulated do something about their rescue and repair.

The Trust makes its Award - the World Ship Trust International Maritime Heritage Award - for outstanding examples of historic ship rescue. The importance of this Award is underlined by the fact that Heads of State, Kings, Queens, Presidents, continue to make the presentations.

The Trust regularly distributes its World Ship Review to its membership. This publication includes information of all types and conditions of vessels, maritime museums and associated bodies, and welcomes contributions from everyone in the maritime and nautical world.

The Trust has a great deal of goodwill for the work it is doing. But it needs people now to help it practically and financially to give it that extra weight and thrust. In short, it needs YOU.