maritime

A combination of a world record-breaking trawler, a floating lighthouse and a dizzying array of maritime objects that include a stuffed polar bear called Erik are all helping to make Hull one of the top 25 places in the world to visit in 2026.

The East Yorkshire city is on the verge of completing an ambitious £70m transformation, which, supporters believe, will propel it into becoming an international tourist destination.

Hull is the only place in the UK to be included in National Geographic’s annual list of must-visit places, which also features Manila, Beijing and the North Dakota Badlands.

Eyebrows have been raised about the inclusion of Hull, a city that had a reputation problem even in the 17th century, when the poet John Taylor wrote: “From Hell, Hull and Halifax, good Lord deliver us.”

Neither eyebrow of Mike Ross, the city council’s Liberal Democrat leader, went up when he heard the news. “There was a sense of surprise for some,” he said. “But why shouldn’t Hull be one of the top 25 places? It has got so much going for it. This is a place that can do things and we want more people to see that.”

When the Guardian visited on a rainy day in December, it was clear that everything is nearly there. Finishing touches and final decisions are being made for a series of openings taking place in 2026.

The Hull Maritime project includes a new home for a restored trawler, the Arctic Corsair, known as Hull’s Cutty Sark.

A vessel called the Spurn Lightship, which for 50 years guided ships through the treacherous waters of the Humber estuary, will reopen to the public after a makeover.

Swathes of public space are being improved, including a £21m refurbishment of Queen’s Gardens, a former dock; and the city’s much-missed Maritime Museum will reopen after a five-year closure.

The ambitious project is a legacy from Hull’s UK city of culture success in 2017 and has had a number of frustrating delays, but 2026 will be the year things finally start happening.

The Arctic Corsair, the project’s centrepiece, is a deep-sea trawler built in 1960 that operated during the cod wars with Iceland and which once broke world records for landing the largest amount of cod and haddock in a year.

It is an emblem of Hull’s proud trawling history – still within living memory – and has been a visitor attraction since 1999. It was badly in need of restoration and closed to the public in 2018. Today, the 57-metre-long boat positively gleams.

The Arctic Corsair was restored by Dunston Ship Repairs in Hull, where it is docked, and everyone involved in the project has praised the company for going above and beyond what was expected.

For Dave Clark, the technical director at Dunston, it has clearly been a passion project but he will be happy when it makes its way to its permanent home. “People need to be on it, it needs to be seen,” he said. “People need to hear the stories, to see the working conditions … men working 16 hours a day.

“We are all from Hull and most of the people who work for us have been involved in the fishing industry their whole life and you can see the pride that has been put into it.”

Moving the trawler from its current berth to its dry dock home will be a huge challenge involving dredging and a possible 20-point turn.

Men who used to work on the Arctic Corsair have also volunteered their memories and knowledge. They include Cliff Gledhill, a retired maritime engineer who seems to know every working part of the boat’s machinery and huge, labyrinthine engine room.

“It’s 52 years since I first came on this ship,” he said. “If the ship broke down, it doesn’t matter where it was … Iceland or Norway or wherever, the chances were that one of us [engineers] would go.”

He said the Arctic Corsair was important to Hull. “It was a very successful ship with quite a history. It was the pride of the fleet. This is going to be a massive attraction.”

At the city’s Maritime Museum, housed in former dock offices, the rooms are still largely empty but the roof has been fixed, display cabinets are being put in place and boxes are ready to be emptied.

Robin Diaper, a curator, said the museum was a place for tourists to spend time but also somewhere local people could pop in to see Erik, the popular polar bear on long-term loan from Dundee, while they were shopping.

“We wanted to make the whole project world-class,” said Diaper. “It’s of a standard you might see in New York or Paris or London. But we also want a young mother from the Orchard Park estate to be able to just walk in and for it to be hers as well.”

Rooms in the museum that were previously off limits are being used to display far more objects, more boldly. The grade II*-listed former docks building was badly in need of restoration. When it rained, plastic sheeting had to be placed over whale skeletons hanging from the ceiling.

Hull also has the Ferens Art Gallery, the Wilberforce House Museum and its spectacular aquarium, The Deep. With everything happening in 2026 it is a world-class destination for visitors, say tourism officers.

For the council leader Ross, the challenge is for people not to be surprised they might have a great time in Hull, but to know in advance that they will. “If we can do that, we’ve made it,” he said.

The recent decision by the United States Navy (USN) to cancel the Constellation-class frigate program after eight years of development and billions of dollars in investment represents a significant setback in US naval modernization drive. The Constellation-class was meant to become a modern, multi-mission combat vessel capable of relieving operational pressure from Arleigh Burke-class destroyers and narrowing the growing numerical advantage of the China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). Instead, continuous design changes, and subsequent delays changed what was supposed to be an easy-to-construct warship platform into a costly and significantly delayed project. After failure of several major projects like Zumwalt destroyer and Littoral Combat Ships (LCS), the cancellation of the Constellation-class frigate project has degraded Washington’s efforts to sustain the naval balance of power against rapidly expanding naval fleet of PLAN.

The Constellation-class project was a product of USN’s urgent need to fill the gap left behind Oliver Hazard Perry-class (OHP) frigates which were phased out from USN services in 2015. The OHPs, despite lack of built-in vertical launch system (VLS), were regarded for their reliability, and versatility in missions ranging from open-ocean escorting to anti-submarine warfare (ASW) and anti-surface warfare (ASuW). The retired hulls of OHPs were purchased by navies of several US allies including Australia, Bahrain, Chile, Egypt, Pakistan, Spain, Taiwan, and Turkiye. Their withdrawal from USN created a capability void that the Littoral LCS program – comprising of Freedom class and Independent class vessels – was expected to fill. However the LCS encountered numerous mechanical failures in hulls and propulsion system, cost overruns, and capability gaps that rendered it unsuitable for missions in contested naval environments.

As USN halted further procurement and early retirement of LCS, it attempted to follow a new approach, i.e., opt for a proven design tailored to meet USN requirements. Franco-Italian FREMM frigate design was chosen as the baseline for a modern, affordable American Constellation-class frigate. At initial stage, it appeared a sound idea. The FREMM platform had already proven itself in European naval forces, and the USN specific variant was modified to carry 32 Mk-41 VLS cells capable of firing SM-series interceptors and even Tomahawk cruise missiles, alongside Naval Strike Missiles. This program committed to be a potent yet affordable and rapid addition in USN fleet while retaining 85 percent commonality with original design. But as USN continued to impose new requirements, complications in construction, and alteration in designing began to inhibit the efficiency of the program. Constellation-class frigate undertook major size increment than parent FREMM design, stretching from 466 feet to nearly 500 and increasing to over 7,200 tons. Instead of leveraging a proven design, USN trapped itself with a pseudo-original design which now shared mere 15 percent commonality with the original design. By 2024, the first frigate was already three years behind schedule, and the program’s cost enlarged well beyond initial estimations. Faced with increasing costs, long delays, and design complications, the USN eventually axed the Constellation-class frigate program too, leaving behind a significant gap in USN surface fleet which this frigate was supposed to fill.

USN now wants a new frigate class structured on proven American design by 2028. Reportedly, the design of US Coast Guard (USCG) Legend Class cutter will be used as baseline to develop a USN specific variant. These 4,600 tons class ships are capable of conducting blue water operations and support 57mm deck gun, Phalanx CIWS, and flight deck with hanger to support rotary wing operations.  Its USN specific frigate version can accommodate a 16-cell Mk-41 VLS module, 8x Harpoon/NSM cruise missiles in canisters, RIM-116 Sea RAM, and torpedo tubes. Using an American proven design for mass producing USN specific frigate of relatively smaller size and low tonnage will allow USN to produce and commission larger number of hulls in relatively less time. But on flip side, this new frigate class will be far less capable than recently cancelled Constellation-class as they are unlikely to carry Aegis CMS, and will have significantly less range, endurance, and weapon load-out.

Nowhere is this challenge more evident than in the rapid growth of China’s naval power. PLAN is now commissioning highly capable naval combatants including flat-deck aircraft carrier (Fujian), next generation destroyers (Type-055 and Type-52DL) and frigates (Type-54B), and new class of conventional as well as nuclear submarines. Chinese coast guard, and maritime militia collectively operate more than 750 vessels – more than twice the number of hulls under US control. While the US Navy still retains qualitative advantages, especially in nuclear submarines and carrier aviation, trends in shipbuilding capacity significantly favor Beijing. China commands more than half of global commercial ship production, while the US share barely registers at a tenth of a percent. This allows China to mass produce modern warships for PLAN at a pace the United States cannot simply match.

Although USN plans to expand its fleet from 296 manned warships to 381 manned warships and 134 unmanned vessels by 2045, but so far trends of decline hull strengths have been observed. Ticonderoga class cruisers are gradually retiring, next-generation DDG(X) destroyers are still in far future, Ford class nuclear aircraft-carriers and Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) are facing delays, and Arleigh Burke Flight-III destroyers are not producing at rate faster enough to accommodate these growing gaps. Unmanned vessels are sometimes perceived as a viable solution to fill-up the gaps but these vessels cannot replace manned warships on one-on-one basis. In sum, aforementioned projects expose the persistent limitations of ship production capacity of US shipyards. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that reviving the shipbuilding sector to meet the USN long-term needs would require annual investments of more than $40 billion for three consecutive decades—a staggering commitment that would require political consensus and sustained strategic vision.

The cancellation of the Constellation-class frigate, just like past projects of Zumwalt and LCS- thus represents a persistent crisis in US naval build-up. As China accelerates its naval production and expands power projection into the Indo-Pacific, the United States finds itself struggling to revive its own shipbuilding capacity. Whether Washington can reverse this trajectory will depend on its ability to reform procurement processes, invest in industrial capacity, and adopt realistic designs aligned with strategic needs. Without such changes USN risks entering the next decade with too few ships to meet global demands.