Julie insisted I do the blog entry today, it just being "boats and guns and stuff", so here goes. Apologies to those who prefer Julie's turns of phrase, and less verbose reports.
We spent the whole day at the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard today. This is a complex of museums, all owned by the Royal Navy and part of the largest naval base in the UK. For those in the area, I highly commend visiting the base. We could easily have spent a second day seeing all that was there.
First up was "The Mary Rose", Henry VIII's flagship from the early 1500's. This is significant for two main reasons: a) "navies" didn't exist before this time (Henry inherited only 5 small ships total from his father); and b) it was one of the first true "warships". When it was built, it was designed to be a floating platform to carry soldiers (as all ships were), but later was retrofitted to primarily be a floating platform to carry guns (which was a new concept at the time).
The "Mary Rose" sank in coastal waters during a naval battle with the French, and was only located in the 1960s. The remaining body of the ship was raised in the 1980s, and has been subject to a prolonged drying and "curing" process, only going on public display last year.
The museum was choc-full of relics retrieved from the wreckage, and also modern re-creations that could be handled.
This was Julie's favourite museum, as she taught her Grade 4 students about it a couple of years ago.
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| He's not _that_ tall, once you get rid of the poofy hat and high-rise shoes. |
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| The remnant of the Mary Rose - the buried starboard half. Opposite this (where we stood), on each of 3 levels, were mock-ups of the decks that contained the artefacts recovered. |
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| I guess the captain's dog goes down with the ship too. |
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| Most of the archers had a left acromial process (a shoulder bone) that had not fused. This indicates that: a) training with the longbow started before the bones would normally have fused at puberty; and b) most of the work was done by the left arm pushing the bow away, rather than the right arm pulling the bowstring back ... |
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| ... so _not_ like this! :) I managed to draw the 15kg (training) bow alright, but felt like I was going to dislocate something drawing the 30kg bow. |
Fast forward 250 years, and next up was the HMS Victory, Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar. Nelson led a smaller British force against the combined French and Spanish fleets, capturing the French admiral, and sinking or capturing two-thirds of the enemy fleet. The battle ended Napoleon's ability to pose a naval threat to Britain, and ushered in a century of absolute British naval dominance of the oceans.
The HMS Victory is _incredibly_ cramped. The ceiling on the deck with the lowest height was brushing Benedict's hair. It wound up being very painful on my neck, trying to keep my face forward while not knocking my head.
I would have attributed this to the stunted frame of pre-modern folk, but apparently the ship's captain was my height (194cm), and the carpenter, who worked on the most cramped deck, was 200cm! The actual reason is that the decks severely lose strength the further apart they are, and apparently the deck heights are the "sweet spot" between sturdiness and being so close together that the ship becomes unusable.
Ben chose this as his favourite part of the day, but in his usual way, just shrugged when I asked why it was.
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| HMS Boaty McGunface |
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| Note the height of Ben versus the height of the grand entrance. |
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| Sickbay beds. Usually the crew had much tighter-fitting hammocks. |
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| Crew lived and worked in teams. This space between the cannon was the sleeping, eating, and living space for a dozen-or-so men. |
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| The spot where Nelson died. Shot by a French sniper late in the battle, Nelson died shortly after being told of the decisive nature of the British victory. |
Jump another 50 or so years to the 1860s, and the HMS Warrior. Like the "Mary Rose", this was a transitional ship between two eras. It was the second "ironclad", launched in response to a similar French design. And, in my humble opinion, would have whopped arse over either of the more famous early ironclads, the Civil War-era USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia (which we had the honour of seeing when we were in the US 5 years ago).
Some areas of the ship were almost identical to the HMS Victory: all rigging, and crew sleeping next to cannon. Others were like the 20th-century battleships we have toured, like the USS New Jersey, with massive steel plating and humongous engine turbines. In was not a surprise to find out that it was both cutting-edge (being able to take down any earlier ship without taking damage in return) and at the same time, completely obsolescent within 15 years.
This was my favourite part of the day, seeing the modern and the pre-modern existing side-by-side.
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| HMS Warrior |
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| The bridge. No, literally: a raised walkway running the width of the ship, so the captain could see over the elevated armoured sides of the main deck, and call directions to the quartermaster below. |
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| Bascially the same as the HMS Victory, but with more headspace, and much cleaner (given more modern understanding of hygiene and so on). |
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| Bloody luxury compared to an East End slum of the mid-1800s. |
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Officers mess.
"RHIP ... RHIP never changes ..." (With apologies to Ron Perlman.) |
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| In a warship, even the officers' cabins are expected to host a cannon and a half-dozen crew when under battlestations. Must be a challenge to clean it all up afterwards. ("Oh, won't somebody please think of the carpet??") |
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| The infernal bowels of the engine room. Some suckers had a full time job just shovelling coal from trolleys into the furnaces. Pay for this unskilled work was 50% higher than for the (relatively) skilled seamen. It had bloody well want to be! Huge crankshafts moving at 60 rpm, and no sense of Occupational Health and Safety protections ... |
We also went to an exhibit about the Battle of Jutland, a bit less involved than the museums above. Then on to Oli's favourite part of the day: Action Stations! This was a warehouse full of simulators and hands-on activities, which Lonely Planet describes as "a thinly disguised recruiting tool for the Royal Navy." And if Oliver drives a car as well as he flies a helicopter simulator, then he won't be coming near any vehicle of mine for a while yet!
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| Commando Ben |
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| The floor is lava! |
Overall (another) great day. Off to Stonehenge tomorrow. Given the length of this blog entry, I guess I'll leave that to Julie!
