Portsmouth

Portsmouth is a harbour city with a long and proud naval history.

Its about an hour and a half train ride SW of Woking. (I now express distances in terms of travel time on the train.)

John and I went down on a Sunday to check out their awesome naval museum. It is a huge facility and pretty impressive. Definitely worth the train ride.

There are 2 former working naval ships on display that you can crawl around. A haven for boat enthusiasts. The engineer in John was fascinated. And I have to admit, I found it interesting too.

Our first stop was a ship called "Warrior" which first set sail in 1860. It was was built to protect England from Napoleon and was the first iron clad sailing ship. The shell was 4" thick! The ship operated under sail and when necessary was assisted with steam. It was the first of its kind.


In its day it was an incredible vessel that never fired its canons in anger. (I'm not really sure exactly what that means - but it sounded impressive!)


This photo shows the available range of movement on the deck to position the back canon before firing.



Quarters were very tight - there were 750 men on board. Now, that's a lot of testosterone in one place!

Women, catch your breath! Or should I say - "hold your breath"?

There was no shortage of work and probably very little leisure time. For instance, it took 150 men just to pull up anchor.

Besides all the canons on board, there were a few other weapons, just in case..... sword, rifle and pistol stations were positioned throughout the ship.

After touring Warrior we took a cruise through the harbour to check out some of the newer models and get a breath of fresh sea air.



The other ship to crawl around on is a much older one called Victory. It fought in the Battle of Trafalgar and is where Nelson met his untimely end.

Somehow, I have the distinct feeling I will be learning a lot of British history, that I either learned in school and forgot, or, that I never learned and haven't forgotten. I am not sure which perspective I prefer.

We talked at length with one of the docents about the "engineering" of firing the canons. (Guess who was asking all the questions?)

He told us ten men were used per canon. It took the British sailors 90 seconds to load and fire off a canon.

Pretty amazing for all the finicky stuff they had to do, and to ensure that everything went as planned. Not really something you want to get wrong... Or should I say, you only get wrong once.

The docent was quite proud the British sailors could fire off a canon in 90 seconds. He told us it took the French 3 minutes and the Spanish 5 minutes to pack and fire a canon.

I said "WOW! The French and Spanish were slow!"

He answered with obvious and emphatic pride "No, its that the British were that good!"

Its all about perspective.