Former Chief Minister Tony Brown has called for the return of the historic yacht Peggy to Castletown.

Mr Brown said that, while he understood the need for MNH to temporarily remove the boat from Castletown Nautical Museum for conservation work in 2015, he did not accept that after six years it had not been returned to the town to be housed in a ’purpose-built or modified building’ in the museum.

Outgoing MNH director Edumund Southworth recently justified keeping the Peggy in an industrial building in Braddan, where it was moved to because conditions in the museum’s cellar boathouse were causing tide damage to the vessel.

Mr Brown, a Castletown resident who served as Chief Minister between 2006 and 2011, said it was ’most concerning’ that MNH could not answer why no plans had been drawn up to return the boat to Castletown, asides drafting ’a few rough concept drawings’ which he called ’unacceptable and honestly quite disgraceful’.

The former Chief Minister said that after writing in he had received assurance from the MNH chairman of trustees in January 2015 that the Peggy would be returned to Castletown later that year.

He said he had since contacted numerous people, including the town’s two MHKs and other senior MNH figures, to express concern about the ’total lack of strategic planning’ by MNH to secure the historic schooner’s safe return to what he described as its home.

Mr Brown called for the Peggy to be ’rehoused, safeguarded and displayed’ either in a modified building on the museum site, or a purpose-built building where it can be ’properly housed in a suitably controlled atmosphere’ withing the Nautical Museum complex.

He further described MNH as being ’unwilling to commit to the early return, or even the return, of the Peggy to Castletown’, adding that funding had not even been sought to make any provision for this.

Mr Brown said that this move should not be ’a major task, nor in relative terms is it overtly expensive’ and that it should have been achieved by now.

He suggested that the cost of any new premises for the boat could be offset by MNH selling off the industrial building where the boat is currently stored in Braddan.

He continued: ’This present situation regarding this important part of our island’s history is just not acceptable, especially to me and many people in Castletown, as well as to many throughout the island.’ Mr Brown concluded ’if Manx National Heritage will not publicly commit to a date within a reasonable and acceptable timescale’ for the Peggy’s return, then in his opinion ’either government or Tynwald must intervene and resolve this important matter relating to part of our unique Manx heritage’.

He added that the ’matter will not be allowed to rest’ until such a commitment is given.