Veteran Victory

To continue my nautical theme from last weeks ABC entry here is HMS Victory, the oldest naval ship still in commission.   Launched in 1765 it is both flagship of the First Sea Lord and a living museum to the Georgian navy.  The statue in the foreground is of a sailor carrying part of a field gun. Today this is a competition between teams to transport a field gun over obstacles in the shortest time, dismantling, reassembling and firing.  The origins date from the Siege of Ladysmith (1899/1900) when naval guns were taken off ships and transported overland to help relieve the siege. The current record (set in 2010) is 1 minute and 17.78 seconds and the team holding the record, HMS Naval Base Portsmouth,  is located not too far away from  the Victory.  HMS Victory was moved to Portsmouth in 1922 is crewed by a mix of Royal Navy sailors and staff from the National Museum of the Royal Naval.

You will notice that the ship  has rather a lot of guns, 104 to be precise, but all is not what it seems. Only one of them is real all the rest are made of fibreglass.  If they were the original cast iron cannons the weight would damage the ship without the support of seawater as Victory sits in a dry dock

Although HMS Victory was present at a number of battles it is most famously remembered for the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar in the Napoleonic Wars and the  tactical imagination of the commander Admiral Lord Nelson

who was always loosing bits himself in naval battles and in this ship he met his end.   There are disputes to whereabouts on board he died but

not as to where his cabin was, here astern. I don't know if the windows were smashed in battle to the extent that is always dramatically shown in nautical and pirate films, but apart from that  the cabins always looked the perfect way to travel.  With a crew of 850 other accommodation would not be as convivial.

At the moment this and the first photo is not the present view as the topmasts and rigging have been struck, that is taken down.  They have been dismantled as part of the ships restoration.  Wooden ships need constant repair but this is the first time they have been taken down since 1944.

Time to be piped on board? No this is as far as I got   Despite having mooched around Portsmouth Historic Dockyard on numerous occasions over the years I have never gone on any of the vessels. The reason being that we are usually don't have enough time as are about to sail on a more prosaic ferry to continental Europe. This may also be the reason I don't seem to have taken a photo of Victory's bow or  figurehead or maybe it was the overcast day.

So this photo of a poster produced for the 200th anniversary of Trafalgar which was on the wall in one of the dockyard buildings will have to do for the moment.

An entry to ABC Wednesday - a sail through the alphabet

High Rises

Portsmouth

The sun starting to set on a high-rise building in Portsmouth.   This occupants of this building must have seen some stunning sunsets across the city.  We, however, were side on in our hotel so could just appreciating the light as it illuminated the building.

Hands steady, click.  Yes we often find ourselves photographing the same thing but in this case I have been quicker so now photograph the other happy snapper

Liverpool

Heading north and nearer home, another city skyline from old to modern where nearby in the Tate there was a high-rise

stack of plates.   This is "No Title (Stacked Plates)" by the American Sculptor Robert Therrien who likes to super-size household items and trigger memories of childhood. These huge plates tower over you  and when walking around the shiny curves make it seem as though it is smoothly moving.  Quite discombobulating but mesmerising.

An entry to ABC Wednesday - a hop from letter to letter through the alphabet

     

ABC Wednesday - Warrior

HMS Warrior, now preserved in the Portsmouth historic dockyard.  Just to show it on contrasting English summer days, here it is again

Built in 1860 it was the first iron hulled, armoured warship.  Powered by both steam and sail it was a cutting edge design but only 4 years later it was superseded by faster, better armoured and bigger gunned warships and downgraded to coastguard duties. In 1883 her main masts were found to be rotten and to save cost she was converted to a Naval School.  When she was put up for sale in 1924 no buyer could be found so the ship was once again converted but this time to a floating oil pontoon  and renamed Oil Fuel Hulk C77 to spend her remaining working life in Pembroke, Wales.

By 1978 the Warrior was the only surviving example of the 45 iron hulls built by the Royal Navy between 1861 and 1877,  happily the navy had kept her hull in good condition during her stay in Wales so when it was announced the oil depot would be closed the Maritime Trust made great efforts to ensure it was not scrapped.  Towed to Hartlepool for what turned out to be a £8M nine year restoration project (mostly financed by the Manifold Trust) starting with the removal of 80 tons of rubbish  including the thick concrete layer encasing the upper decks poured on when she had been an oil pontoon.  Once the restoration was finished she left the Coal Dock in Hartlepool  to travel 800 miles down the east coast of England and round into the English Channel to be greeted by fireworks, gun salutes and cheering crowds and at last dropping anchor in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard which has been her home ever since.

 HMS Warrior by the naval artist WF Mitchell (1872)

An entry to ABC Wednesday, a journey from A to Z which this week has moored at W

ABC Wednesday - Journey

To journey by bike is the best way to see a country, faster than walking yet slow enough see the sights and meet the people.  This bike was outside the port office in La Roche Bernard so perhaps the owner had another mode of transport for his journey in mind such as

this one which would take the three sailors out into the Atlantic. If a little more comfort is required maybe something bigger would take one to another country

 such as this ferry leaving Portsmouth bound for St Malo. Or maybe journey across continents by train

although you would have to pick the right day with my local line up the coast. This photo was taken on Sunday and no trains ever run on that day.   So maybe it would be better to jump on

a motor bike like this one.

The ABC Wednesday journey from A to Z has reached the letter J

ABC Wednesday - Dry Dock

Berthed by the side of the resplendent rigging of  HMS Victory (Nelson's flagship) in the  Portsmouth Naval Dockyard this little ship in dry dock is often overlooked despite being painted in the dazzle anti-submarine camouflage she wore for most of 1918.  The HMS Monitor M33 is one of only two World War 1 warships to survive both war and time.  The Monitors were a shallow draft coastal bombardment vessels who steamed into 'enemy' waters to discharge their 6 inch guns.  The HMS Monitor had a long life under different names and guises but during that time many of the original features were removed, now located in Number 1 Dry Dock, Portsmouth these features are being replaced or reconstructed to restore the ship as near as possible to her 1915-1919 configuration.

The ship in the background is HMS Illustrious built in 1976 at Swan Hunter but due to be decommissioned in the next few years. She is an Invincible class light aircraft carrier, the first in class being built in 1973 in the shipyard of the town where I live, at some point the Invincible would also have been in a dry dock (used for construction, maintenance and repair of ships).

 I wonder if it was this large one in Devonshire Dock , maybe not for this photo is on a postcard from the 1920s.  The photographer has climbed the Vickers Crane which was very high and dominated the town, as did its replacement, both now gone, are as all the chimneys in the background which I think must be the old steelworks.

Dash over to ABC Wednesday where there are lots more words starting with D

ABC Wednesday - P

Portsmouth is our starting point and where this ship is heading for port. In the distance is the 170 metre Spinnaker which was constructed in 2005 and has three viewing platforms, including one with a glass floor. Its location is the Gunwharf Quays, the name of which is a clue to the fact that this has been a important naval base for centuries.

Here is the Ark Royal aircraft carrier in the early evening and here is the

ships crest. It is the fifth ship to have this name. The first was part of the fleet that was sent out to fight the Spanish Armada in 1588 as it headed for English shores. The weather in 1588 was stormy, as it has been here this week, there has been a great deal of precipitation over the weekend and some flooding (an Arc might have been useful). The lawn became a lake but by Monday morning it
had reduced to a puddle. The birds will not be short of water.
The definition of a puddle is small enough to step over or shallow enough to walk through,
but unless you are under ten, the walk through option is usually comes after squeeze round or jump on rocks.
The poor old pampas grass has taken a few beating so far this month, and has been very bedraggled. This piece stuck to my car rear window
but a good breeze dried it out. Every year it throws its fonds up in late summer
fresh, white and straight. Every year the wind and rain pummels it in the winter until only the small and strong survive. It produces a million seeds in a lifetime, probably trying to find its way back to South America.

Pop over to ABC Wednesday to peruse more possibilities of the letter P