Portsmouth–Wednesday

Today its a visit to Two Grand Ladies of the sea…

We walked the 5 minutes from our flat to the Historic Dockyard, as I’ve always wanted to visit Nelsons Flagship HMS Victory, and its actually why we are in Portsmouth.

HMS Victory is a 104-gun first-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, ordered in 1758, laid down in 1759 and launched in 1765. She is best known for her role as Lord Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar on 21 October 1805.

In 1922, she was moved to a dry dock at Portsmouth, England, and preserved as a museum ship. She has been the flagship of the First Sea Lord since October 2012 and is the world's oldest naval ship still in commission. (Wikipedia)

Its also where Nelson died.

She is currently under another restoration. They have taken the 27 miles of rigging down. And they ( the British government) are spending a LOT of money to sort her out.

She is spreading in the bottom as she is out of the water and doesn't have the pressure to keep it all together…. I know how she feels! 

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And then next door, we travel back a couple of hundred years to visit the Mary Rose Museum.

The Mary Rose is a carrack-type warship of the English Tudor navy of King Henry VIII. After serving for 33 years in several wars against France, Scotland, and Brittany and after being substantially rebuilt in 1536, she saw her last action on 19 July 1545. While leading the attack on the galleys of a French invasion fleet, she sank in the Solent, the straits north of the Isle of Wight.

The wreck of the Mary Rose was rediscovered in 1971. It was raised in 1982 by the Mary Rose Trust, in one of the most complex and expensive projects in the history of maritime archaeology. The surviving section of the ship and thousands of recovered artefacts are of immeasurable value as a Tudor-era time capsule. (Wikipedia).

The Museum is really great, it is on four levels and they play pictures on the ship as if sailors are on it.

Okay, I'm not explaining myself very well….. ..and its very dark so photos aren't so good…

Anyway, it was a big improvement on when Graham was last here in the 80’s as that was when they were spraying water on it to stop it rotting and it couldn't be seen for the mist. And now its treated and can be left dry.

We got to touch a piece of the ship, and smell the rope which still smells like tar. Graham got to fulfil a dream and play with a longbow.

It was interesting how much facial reconstructing they had done on the skeletons that they found with the wreck.

And its time to play ‘Spot the Doggie’, but this one is definitely dead…

I notice they didn't do a facial reconstruction on the doggie but just claimed it was ‘terrier type’.

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As we are only 2 minutes from a huge cinema.. 14 screens! We took ourselves off to the movies tonight and saw the Greatest Showman, which was just great fun and had me dancing all the way back to our little flat..