Click on thumbnails for larger view

The fifteenth ship to bear the name of “HMS Dolphin” (later to become TS Dolphin) was built by the Middlesbrough firm of Dixon & Co. Ltd., and was launched on 9th December, 1882. She was a three-masted auxiliary barque, the ship was fitted with a horizontal compound “Back acting” steam engine.

Her construction incorporated the relatively new system of transverse framing fitted at 45degrees, a system credited to Sir Robert Seppings and can be seen today in HMS Trincomalee, HMS Unicorn and RRS Discovery.

The hull was planked with four inch mahogany covered by a two inch layer of teak, the whole hull up to the water line was sheathed with heavy gauge copper. The main deck forward was ten inches thick and the ship was reinforced both fore and aft ready to take her guns.

The 925 ton ship was commissioned at Sheerness in 1884 and was then attached to the Mediterranean Squadron. In 1885 a landing party from the ship's crew of 113 formed part of a naval brigade landed at Suakin in the Sudan. Commander Sydney M. Earley-Wilmot was in command at that time. He later became an Admiral. HMS Dolphin saw action in the Tel El-Kebir campaign of 1882. In March 1885 she saw active service in Egypt, India and Australia, and fought at the battle of Tofrik. She saw some real action in 1888 dealing with the remnants of the slave trade. The Dolphin commenced a less lively but equally worthwhile career. In 1896 she was paid off at Sheerness and after her engines were removed to became a sea-going sail training ship.

HMS Dolphin was stationed at Portland and took boys on four month sail training cruises. In 1907 the ship was de-rigged and taken to Portsmouth. With the advent of the submarine branch of the Navy the Dolphin was used as a depot ship along with H.M.S. Mercury and subsequently moved to Gosport. On 31st August, 1912, Captain Roger Keyes (later Admiral of the Fleet Lord Keyes of Zeebrugge fame) hoisted his broad pennant as Commodore 2nd class in command of the Submarine Branch of the Royal Navy. The Dolphin continued in this role as the first submarine depot ship until 1924 when she was decommissioned and gave her name to HMS Dolphin Submarine base at Gosport still in operation today.

In 1925 the role of the Dolphin took yet another turn and she was bought by Lieutenant Commander J. M. Robertson, the Glasgow ship-owner, Sir Donald Pollock. These two gentlemen, who were officers on board H.M.S. Claverhouse which was stationed at the West Old Dock, planned to convert the ship into a nautical museum.

Their plans were interrupted when the ship was being towed up from Portsmouth. While approaching the Firth of Forth the ship took on water during bad weather. The next day the tug crew noticed that the ship was lying rather low in the water. As they approached Inchkeith (where only four years earlier the Waltraute soon to become Vindicatrix had also floundered) it was decided that the ship was liable to sink and they beached the Dolphin on the south side of the Forth.

For the next eight months the ship lay awash off Fisherrow until she was salvaged by the Leith Salvage Co. Ltd., and taken to Leith for dry dock and repairs. Shortly afterwards the Dolphin was taken to Rosyth to the Metal Industrial yard. Sir Donald Pollock was the firm's chairman and he had the ship refitted with material taken from the battleship King George V which had just been broken up. The Dolphin ended her sea-going life when she was berthed at the West Old Dock in 1928 where she remained until moved to her last berth in 1969.

During the Second World War the Dolphin was called upon to help and was used as a barracks for the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. The ship's war scars were inflicted when a bomb fell on Portland Place just opposite and debris fell on the ship's top deck. 

It was in 1944 that the Dolphin settled down to become a Merchant Navy Training Ship. Captain Salvesen, Mr Tom McPhail and Mr J. J. Robertson all of whom had a long connection with the sea, decided that a pre-training sea school for cadets and deck boys was needed. At that time it was agreed to operate as a department of Leith Nautical College on board the ship, she was to be called TS Dolphin. 

Shetlander Captain Adam Tait, born in Aith, a Master Mariner with a lifetime's experience, was given the job in 1944. He was presented with a handful of deck boys and told to get on with the job, which he did. 

The TS Dolphin was eventually handed over, by Sir Donald Pollock, to a society, The TS Dolphin Training Ship Society, the ship to be rented to Leith Nautical College. The welfare of the boys, the social life of the ship and the organising of evening classes was to be the responsibility of the Society. 

As the numbers of trainees and courses increased it was decided to establish residential accommodation for boys out of the travelling range of Leith. The money for this scheme was generously provided by the Theodore Salvesen Memorial Fund, the King George V fund for Sailors and by local ship-owners. Up to fifty boys had residential accommodation on the ship. The number of boys on board at any time varied from about 80 to 90, the total complement being 92. This number was made up of Deck Boys, Catering Boys and Cadets.

In 1950 the college opened a class for ship's cooks; the ratings who came for this training sat the Ships' Cooks and Higher Certificates. The department of training was under the guidance of the Atholl Crescent School of Domestic Science and a Norwegian chef, Mr Johansen, was most certainly in charge.

There were three main courses on the ship. One was a course for Cadets, open to boys between 15-17 who had completed a third year Secondary School course and who could produce satisfactory evidence of their proficiency' in mathematics. The boys must also have had an M.O.T. sight test and be physically fit. The final selection was made by the entrance examination and enrolment took place in August, January and April for a 44 week session. If the boys, who completed this course, gained a first or second class certificate at the end of the course, they were allowed a six month remission of the four year apprenticeship at sea. 

The other two courses were for catering and deck boys and were of 14 weeks' duration. The boys who entered those courses must have been educated to a fourth year Secondary School standard and be physically fit. In addition the deck boys must have good eyesight and the two courses were mainly practical in nature with the catering cadets doing galley and cabin duties. The deck boys were given a very thorough course in sailor work.

All the boys, irrespective of their course, were given training in boat work, swimming and lifesaving and in the latter two the Dolphin had a long and proud record. The ship gained many trophies and cups for their prowess in the aquatic sphere. Over 240 boys passed through the Dolphin every year and the total of boys who have trained on the ship was over 4000.

The time had come for the TS Dophin, on the fourth of July 1977 while the rest of the country looked on she was towed from the Inner Dock 3 where she had lain. The West Old Dock was scheduled to be filled in where Dolphin had spent almost fifty years. The TS Dolphin was beached on a spring tide at near by Bo’ Ness to be burned out where she lay to salvage her precious copper cladding that had kept her so safe for almost a hundred years. It was ironic that the copper cladding, which had protected Dolphin, was the reason for her being torn apart.

Her skeleton must have been hard to move even after burning as the hull of the Dolphin was planked with four inch mahogany covered by a two inch layer of teak, the whole being sheathed with heavy gauge copper. The main deck forward was ten inches thick and the ship was reinforced with cast iron both fore and aft. It is hard to imagine the loss today or the ineptitude of the Royal Navy Submarine Branch or the Merchant Navy, feeble attempts were made to save her, this was the worlds first submarine depot ship, and from 1896 to 1907 she had been a sail training ship, and had been a wooden connection to the Nelson Sailing Traditions of two hundred years earlier.

There is sadness and even some anger that so much was lost, Dolphin had been home to thousands of Royal Navy boys between 1896 1924 and Merchant Navy boys 1928 to 1977.

I remember her clearly as home, she was secure and warm, and I was only fifteen in January 1962. We had great fun but at the same time we worked hard with knots splicing and boxing the compass, accounts, and book keeping. Rowing, sailing, swimming and just sculling dinghies around the West Old Dock passed many happy hours away. The coarse hairy blankets the salty porridge and the bucket of Coca and the “Jam and Wad” just before lights out. The Dolphin had “the smell” that can transport any seaman back to his memories of ships past, you only need the slightest whiff of this powerful aroma of any living ship. The Dolphin still lives on in the minds of her boys now scattered to the four points of the compass. The very compass in our minds we learned to “box” in quarter points in order to earn our shore leave. 

Stephen Sherratt, R770014