For many years, I had wished to visit the Historic Dockyard in Portsmouth and see the three major museum ships there, and now the opportunity had finally come. On Thursday, 22 January, we made the 50-minute journey by car, arriving around mid-day. The weather was fine and it was a perfect day to view these magnificent vessels.
First we took a guided tour of HMS Victory, famous for being Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar. It has been beautifully restored and preserved, though the preservation process is still an ongoing and expensive battle against the ravages of time and weather.
First we took a guided tour of HMS Victory, famous for being Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar. It has been beautifully restored and preserved, though the preservation process is still an ongoing and expensive battle against the ravages of time and weather.
Launched in 1765, the Victory is still officially in commission in the Royal Navy, though she has understandably not functioned as a warship since 1812. She saw illustrious service in several sea battles even before Trafalgar and in the 19th Century was put to a number of uses in harbour. By 1922, however, she was in a very poor state until the 'Save the Victory' campaign was begun. It is marvellous that we can still view this relic from the age of fighting sail today and get an impression of what life was like aboard one of Britain's 'wooden walls'. One thing that was painfully drawn to my attention was the lack of headroom everywhere. At only 5' 6", I did not have to stoop nearly as much as Laurie, who is 5' 10" tall, but as the tour progressed I became a liitle too cocky and banged my head on a beam!
Click on the images below for descriptions.
Click on the images below for descriptions.
After completing our tour of HMS Victory, we moved on to the museum that houses the remains of the Mary Rose. This was the pride of Henry VIII's navy but capsized and sank in 1545 while engaged in battle against a French invasion fleet off Portsmouth. The precise reasons for the disaster are not known, but it is speculated that she may have been top-heavy and heeled too far over in a gust of wind, causing open gun ports to be submerged below the water line. She lay in the silt of the Solent until 1982, when she was raised in the culmination of a major archaeologica project. The timbers of the hull are on view in an isolated environment with strict climate control to prevent them drying out too quickly. An astounding number of artifacts have also been recovered in a remarkable state of preservation owing to the deoxygenated nature of the seabed silt, providing a vast resource of priceless information. For example, so many yew longbows were discovered, almost in their original state, that they could afford to test some to destruction in order to establish the amount of pull needed to bend them. The museum was opened less than two years ago, so it was perhaps good that I put off the visit to Portsmouth until now.
With the final ship on our list, we metaphorically jumped forward in time to 1860, when HMS Warrior was launched. The Warrior was a great contrast to the two earlier ships as her hull was built completely of iron and, although she still carried a full rig of sails, she could be driven by a steam-powered screw propeller. The ship was also armoured with 4.5" of wrought iron. She was the first ship of her kind: a steam-powered, armoured, iron-hulled, sea-going warship, and she immediately made every other warship obsolete. Nevertheless, there were some features that would have been familiar to veterans of Trafalgar, such as the sailing rig and the long rows of broadside-mounted, muzzle-loading guns. Like most ships of Victoria's navy, HMS Warrior never fired a shot in anger; a tribute, perhaps, to her effectiveness as a deterrent. Si vis pacem, para bellum.
Personally, I found HMS Warrior the most interesting ship of the three from a technological point of view. She represents the age of transition from the wooden sailing ships (like Victory) to the steel leviathans that would fight long-distance gunnery battles in WW1 and WW2.
The afternoon was at an end. The sun had already set and the new moon was visible through Warrior's rigging as we said goodbye and made our way back to the bus terminal for the park-and-ride system. It was definitely a day well spent.
The afternoon was at an end. The sun had already set and the new moon was visible through Warrior's rigging as we said goodbye and made our way back to the bus terminal for the park-and-ride system. It was definitely a day well spent.