England

Portsmouth Historic Dockyard

B Byrd

— 6 min read
Portsmouth Historic Dockyard
In front of the HMS Victory with Mike and Jo on Monday. We returned to the Dockyard by ourselves on Tuesday.

After buying discounted 12-month family passes to the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, we managed to visit on Monday and Tuesday (not quite 12 months), which was well worth it. The main (initial) intent was to see Nelson's famous HMS Victory (from the battle of Trafalgar), but the highlight was actually our tour of the HMS Warrior (and only partly because I was very hunched over while touring the Victory).

Portsmouth Harbour and the Spinnaker Tower.
HMS Warrior and Boathouse 4.

The HMS Warrior was built during the Victorian era and was apparently the largest warship of her age. Her other claim to fame was the firing rate. Cannons could fire at once every 55 seconds (quite favourable compared to foreign navies of once every two to three minutes, and still a significant improvement over the 90 seconds of the older HMS Victory). Thanks to some ship design and cannon mounting innovations, she could also fire a simultaneous broadside (all cannons firing at once on one side) without capsizing (see Mary Rose below).

HMS Warrior.
Rigging of the HMS Warrior.
After many disappointingly bolted down swords, rifles and pistols, F finally found a practice cutlass available for learning the key guards and cuts for navy life. There followed much "practising"!
There were also some opportunities for dressing up, which were well utilised. Able-seaman F was much more serious than his Midshipman.
F and J were given a thorough introduction to life as ship's boys by a local Able-seaman.
J "firing the cannon".

The HMS Victory was famously Admiral Nelson's vessel during the battle of Trafalgar. Unfortunately (for us at least), it is currently undergoing significant restoration work, so much of it was covered. We could still tour the inside though (much to the protestations of my back, which had only short reprieves between the beams from significant hunching).

Bow of the HMS Victory.
Sick bay of the HMS Victory.
F and J were somewhat fascinated by this rather gory display at the ship's surgeon's area (A may have refused to peek into these particular buckets).
Just a little bit of rope in the stores.
A's hand for scale!
A walkway along the Victory's keel.
The rudder still in place is believed to be the one that was on the ship at the time of the battle of Trafalgar. Other parts around the keel have been replaced/restored after rotting or damage from bombing during WWII.

There were also two aircraft carriers in dock during our visit, which was pretty cool.

The HMS Queen Elizabeth (RO8), the fleet flagship of the Royal Navy.
The HMS Prince of Wales (RO9).

On our second day at the docks we started off with a harbour cruise. This gave even better views of the carriers as well as lots of other interesting vessels.

Very full paddle steamer passing us in the harbour.
Police patrol boat near the carriers.
The frigate HMS Dragon undergoing refit.
The HMS Dragon up close.
Coastal patrol boat.
A channel ferry.
An experimental patrol craft (X01) we were lucky enough to see coming in. Apparently it can be deployed and controlled completely remotely.
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A Norwegian cadet training ship. Apparently the largest fully rigged sailing ship still in active service in the world.
The Sorlandet.

After our harbour tour, we spent the rest of the day at the Mary Rose museum, looking through some of the more than 19,000 artifacts recovered from the wreck. The exhibits were fantastic and the story of the wreck recovery was amazing.

Reconstructed model of the Mary Rose. There remains some debate on the number of upper decks.
Ballock dagger, so named for the appearance of the hilts (I'll let you figure it out from there).
A tried her hand at the (smaller) longbow.
The actual wreck.

Overall, we really enjoyed the docks. Just a pity we won't have any more chances to use our 12-month pass. We could have easily spent a few more days there.

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