Hartlepool in County Durham, northeast England, is not renowned as a tourist destination. With its gritty industrial and shipbuilding past, its main claim to fame was for being bombarded by the German navy on Dec 16, 1914, killing 130 people.

Neighbouring Scarborough and Whitby were attacked on the same day, but less seriously.

Since 2016, however, Hartlepool has been home to a first-class tourist attraction in the shape of the HMS Trincomalee, which is the pride and joy of the National Museum of the Royal Navy.

Trincomalee, built in 1817, is Britain’s oldest warship still afloat. The HMS Victory in Portsmouth is much older but she is in dry dock and not floating.

Trincomalee was built at the Bombay Dockyard in India by Jamsetjee Bomanjee Wadia, a master shipbuilder. She was named after a naval battle that took place between the British and French in 1782 off the port of Trincomalee in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka.

Trincomalee was one of 47 38-gun Leda-class frigates built between 1800 and 1830.

After a long career, much of which was spent mothballed in reserve, she was destined for the shipbreakers in 1897 but was saved by philanthropist G Wheatly Cobb for use as a training ship.

Trincomalee was subsequently renamed Foudroyant, and it was only 90 years later that she was towed to Hartlepool for restoration to her original condition and returned to her former name.

Surrounding Trincomalee is an authentic recreation of a quayside from the early 1800s, making you feel as though you are on the set of a “Pirates of the Caribbean” film. When it opened in 1994 it was known as Hartlepool Historic Quay.

You will also find out that Hartlepool was the birthplace of Reg Smythe, the creator of the comic strip “Andy Capp”, who no doubt modelled his popular cap-wearing character on some of the colourful characters he encountered in the pubs and streets of Hartlepool.

This article first appeared on Northumberland Traveller.