Manx National Heritage has outlined its plans to return the historic Peggy yacht to the Nautical Museum in Castletown, with a special 50-page report submitted to Tynwald in response to a request for one earlier this year.

In 2015 yacht was moved from the museum’s cellar, where it was being damaged by seawater, for safe storage in an industrial unit in Braddan.

MNH has now laid out four options for developing the nautical museum so it can properly accommodate the Peggy for public display.

Technically there are six options in the report, but the first is for returning the Peggy to her original cellar, and the sixth is to move it to an alternative site - these options are outlined for procedure, but immediately rejected as they are not consistent with MNH’s strategy for the Peggy.

Option two, the most expensive at £5,230,000, is to house the 18th century schooner in a dry dock outside the museum and surround it in an enclosure.

Option three is adapting the existing ’stables’ attached to the museum, removing its roof and building glass walls to shelter the Peggy.

Option four is to build a new boathouse for the Peggy within the museum’s courtyard, at a cost of £2,125,000.

This is the option which the report concludes as being the most appropriate.

It describes it as being the most straightforward, lowest risk, and involving minimum disruption to the museum’s historic buildings.

The roof of the structure would be designed to look like a sail. A further £2,850,000 of expenditure would then be required for conservation/repair of the site, displays, provision of visitor facilities, access and retail enhancements.

There is also option five, which is a variation of option four and involves building a larger boathouse which makes complete use of the courtyard space.

MNH said that the Peggy would be fully rigged and displayed in the way that owner George Quayle, a prominent banker and politician, intended. It will now be working on a fundraising strategy to securing financial support for the move. The Peggy is the oldest complete vessel on the UK National Register of Historic Vessels.

The full report is at: www.tynwald.org.im/business/opqp/sittings/20212026/2021-GD-0086.pdf