My Dundee scavenger hunt: ships, lemmings, architectural cow pies and other surprises

All I knew about Dundee, Scotland, before arriving was that it is a port city, that it is home to one of Scotland's major universities and, thanks to a BBC article, that it became known for three J's: jute (a strong fiber used in textiles), jam and journalism.

A view of the Dundee city centre from a perch atop Law Crescent. The Tay Road Bridge goes across the Firth of Tay.  

My first order of business upon arriving was to learn more about the fourth largest city in Scotland (pop. 150,000). And thanks to a chatty bartender at the George Orwell pub, an extremely helpful expert at the local Dundee historical office, the nice woman who runs the local launderette, and some fellow travelers I met along the way, I developed my own scavenger hunt to separate the cool facts from the fiction of Dundee.

The RRS Discovery and its new neighbor,
the Victoria and Albert Museum of Design behind it.

1. Fact or Fiction? Dundee is soon to be home to an attraction that currently only London has.

Fact: The second Victoria & Albert Museum in Great Britain will open in Dundee in September and is expected to draw as many as 500,000 more visitors per year, according to the woman who ran the guest house in which I stayed (confirmed by this article). It's actually the Victoria & Albert Museum of Design.

The new building is part of the waterfront redevelopment and sits next to the RRS Discovery, which was launched in 1901 as a scientific exploratory vessel.

That brings us to the next bit of trivia:

2. Fact or Fiction? The first explorers to reach the South Pole sailed from Dundee on the Discovery.

Me at Discovery's helm. 

Fiction: The Discovery did carry Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his crew of more than 40 to the first in-depth exploration of Antartica. According to some of the interesting tidbits from my tour, the two-year journey included some big discoveries, such as rocks below the ice in Antartica that helped prove continental drift theory, how penguins lived and behaved, and that seal meat taste like "shoe-leather steeped in turpentine." The Discovery even got stuck in the ice for nearly two months but was able to withstand it long enough for the crew to break it free and sail home in 1903.

Discovery's finely-crafted wheel. 

But when Scott returned nearly a decade later aiming to be the first to trek to the South Pole, he found out when he arrived in New Zealand that a Norwegian crew was after the same prize. Scott's team marched inland and reached the South Pole on June 17, 1912, only to find out that the Norwegians
beat him by 33 days. Scott and his crew died on the march back to their ship.

3. Fact or Fiction? The Discovery is the oldest ship docked in Dundee.

Fiction: You would think that a 117-year-old wooden ship would have that honor. But it's actually the HMS Frigate Unicorn, that's still afloat about a mile away.

Launched in 1824 as a 46-gun war ship, it is now the sixth-oldest ship still afloat in the world. One reason it has survived so long is that after fifty years in the Royal Navy, it was roofed and used in reserve.

4. Fact or Fiction? The headquarters for DC Thompson & Co., the largest news publisher in the region, is an "architectural cow pie."

Fact: That might seem like a matter of opinion, but the official City Centre tour brochure describes it precisely as that. But there's a good reason.

This frame of Desperate Dan preparing
to dig in is on display in the DC Thompson
building lobby, which is open to the public.

First, "cow pie" apparently doesn't mean the same thing in Scotland as it does in the U.S. And DC Thompson published a long-running comic strip starring Desperate Dan, who constantly ate cow pies.

The DC Thompson building, home to The Dundee Courier. 

5. Fact or Fiction? The newspaper war is still raging in Dundee.

Fiction: The Courier merged with the Advertiser in 1926. And the same company, DC Thompson, owns both the Courier and the Evening Telegraph. The Telegraph staff moved out of its old building (which seems as long as the Camden Yards warehouse) decades ago. Still, the names of the former papers whose staffs worked in that building still loom large. The words "Courier & Advertiser," "People's Friend," Evening Telegraph" and "People's Journal" still hang over the new occupants, including three beauty salons, a Lebanese and Mediterranean take-out joint, a tutoring center and a bridal boutique.  

6. Fact or Fiction? Dundee is known for video games.

A park with the lemmings immortalized. 

One of the lemmings at work.

Fact: Four classmates from Dundee created a software company that produced a game in the late 1980s called the Lemmings, which hit the market in 1991. After that, the company produced Grand Theft Auto, which went on to mega-success (and controversy) worldwide. The first generation of that game, which includes violence, murders-for-hire and wild driving, uses Dundee's layout and street names for its setting, according to the bartender who first told me about that. 

The Queens Hotel (now a Best Western).

7. Fact or Fiction? Winston Churchill lived in Dundee while representing the city in Parliament as an MP from the liberal party between 1908 to 1922. 

Fiction: All of that is true except for the "lived in" part. Churchill, indeed, represented Dundee as a liberal MP before switching to become a conservative. But he wasn't required to live in the area he represented. He shopped around for a district, and found willing sponsors in Dundee. He usually only visited around election times, according to Adam, the helpful man at the historic society.  

I did, however, find the Queens Hotel, where Churchill often stayed. It's still a hotel (but also a bar and casino). And 10 years ago, they put up a plaque in the hallway commemorating Churchill's frequent stays and hung a frame with a copy of Churchill's letter praising the hotel. 

The letter from Churchill to his wife saying what a "great friend" the hotel is to him. 

8. Fact or Fiction? Dundee might produce the next big thing in art/fashion/design.  

Likely. It was graduation time at the local universities, including the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design and Architecture. And, as part of that, the college held a "Degree Show" for 11 days (including while I was there) to show off the graduates' capstone work. 

The range was impressive: photography, performance art, multimedia, paintings, textiles -- you name it. I walked around for about an hour. Some of the graduates were there to answer questions. 

One student's capstone film played in stairwell of the DJCAR building. 

The textiles were really impressive. This student experimented with ways to reuse fabrics, particularly denim, to create new designs.