Part 9: Portsmouth

WARNING: This blog is not for landlubbers!

In fact, this is the very reason that I am visiting the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard alone. None of my offspring cares much for sailing ships! (I remember one unforgettable rant at young Tessa when I took her as a child to Lunenburg to see the Tall Ships: I simply couldn't comprehend why she wouldn't LOVE to see the ships.) So Mary is taking her family to church while I see the dockyard's three major attractions: HMS VICTORY, The MARY ROSE, and HMS WARRIOR.
I enter Admiral Horatio Nelson's flagship, HMS VICTORY. Launched in 1765 (keel laid in 1759) she is still spectacular, in drydock at Portsmouth since the 1920s. With 104 guns and a complement of 850 men, she is huge.
The dining room of the Great Cabin proves how luxuriously the Admiral lived aboard The Victory. Uniforms are on display at one end of this large, formal eating area.
Towards the aft in the Gallery is Nelson's Day Cabin, elegant and comfortable.
Next, outside the captain's cabin--as comfortable as the Admiral's, one deck below--is the wheel. I learn that it would be manned by 2-4-8 sailors, depending on weather conditions and circumstances.Running low on battery power, I don't take as many photos as I would, but I see the giant capstans, which would use 200 men to turn! I was the first visitor aboard today, and had the ship to myself. The main magazine, I learn, had it blown up, would have created devastation for three miles around! I hurry out of there. (Besides, although I am as short as the average British seaman of the time--Nelson was 5'6"-- these decks force me to walk like a hunchback--hard on my injured back!)
The Quarter Deck. Quoting the guidebook: "It is here Admiral Nelson directed the Battle of Trafalgar. Nelson was shot by a musketeer from the French ship, Redoubtable, and fell mortally wounded at the spot [left] marked by the brass plaque."
The plaque reads, top and bottom:

Here Nelson Fell

21 October 1805

I cannot take photos in the place on the orlop deck where Nelson died. It is set up as a shrine. He was carried there, with his face covered, and died about three hours after being shot. I remember my school history lessons about Nelson: His body was stripped and placed in a large wooden barrel which was then filled with brandy to preserve his body for the voyage back to England. When the ship arrived in Portsmouth, the body was found to be perfectly preserved. Admiral Horatio Nelson was given a state funeral on 9 January 1806 and buried in St. Paul's Cathedral London.

Gun deck: The lower gun deck was the primary living area for the seamen. At meal times 560 men sat down to eat at 90 tables.

The great masts, fore to aft, were the foremast, the main mast, and the mizzen mast. The main mast reached 205 feet. Up from the deck at 75 feet is the main top, a platform from which 40 sharpshooters could engage in battle. There were 32 sails, used in different configurations. (I wish my baby brother, "Scurvy" Pete, were here: he could explain all this to me!)

"Arguably the most famous sea battle ever, and certainly one of the most decisive, the Battle of Trafalgar took place on the 21st October 1805, off the southwest coast of Spain. 27 British ships, brilliantly led by Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson in his flagship, HMS VICTORY, crushed a combined French and Spanish fleet of 33 ships. Trafalgar destroyed forever any ambitions the French Emperor Napoleon may have had of invading Britain and it ushered in a century of British domination of the seas."

200 years after his death, Horatio Nelson is still a major British hero. His famous signal at Trafalgar--ENGLAND EXPECTS THAT EVERY MAN WILL DO HIS DUTY--is commemorated on Trafalgar Day every year--the signal flags spelling out the battle cry are flown from the rigging of HMS VICTORY.

HMS VICTORY is the only surviving ship of the line, and while she left active service in 1812, she is still the flagship of the Commander-in-Chief Naval Home Command. I am ecstatic at my visit, and happy to have found a young woman willing to take my photo, since my official photographer was off singing hymns at church!

Next, I visit HMS WARRIOR, built in 1860 to counter French developments in naval shipbuilding; when she was launched she was the largest, fastest, and most powerful warship in the world. Combining for the first time an iron hull, a steam engine, and armour plating, she was the world's first modern battleship. By 1929, she had been converted, ignominiously, into a floating pontoon, but that preserved her hull so that by 1987, the restored ship could be opened to the public at Portsmouth.

The puzzle, of course, is why a steamship with forty boilers needed sails. The answer is that she used so much coal to fire the boilers that her range was limited to 2,000 miles. She used 11 tonnes of coal an hour!

The other ship at the dockyard, the Mary Rose, cannot be photographed. Having sunk in the Solent in 1545, she wasn't raised until 1982 and brought here. And only the starboard side of her hull survived, the port side having eroded and disintegrated over the years. What remains is now inside a gigantic drydock/laboratory. Since she was brought here she has been sprayed with water-soluble wax, polyethylene glycol, a process that will take more than the original estimate of 17 years! It is fascinating and reminds me of the recovery and preservation of the WASA, in Stockholm, which I saw in 1965.

A modern landmark in Portsmouth is the iconic Spinnaker Tower on the Gunwharf Quay, here seen from HMS WARRIOR. At 170 metres, it has a high-speed elevator and apparently offers spectacular views for 23 miles, of Portsmouth Harbour and the Solent. The Spinnaker was opened in 2005. I did not have time to go to the top. Perhaps I can return some day.

Two-thirds of Britain's naval surface fleet is stationed at Portsmouth. When the Falklands War broke out in 1982, Portsmouth became a round-the-clock hub of preparations. From HMS WARRIOR I see a huge ship, which from her size must be one of the 7,350 ton Type 45 Destroyers.

It is time to move on. I catch one final glimpse of HMS WARRIOR, as the car pulls up, and we go off towards Brighton, hoping to see the Royal Pavilion this time.