ENGLAND EXPECTS

Now why would I use a quote from Lord Nelson as a title for this report? I'll explain in a minute.

Firstly let me say I'm getting over my jetlag, and Barbara is high in the Andes, in Machu Pichu. She says she'll email all about that when she gets back to civilisation. Still no altitude sickness at last report.

In the meantime I spent my first full free day visiting Portsmouth Harbour and the Royal Naval Historical Dockyards. Among other things, this is where they keep Nelson's flagship HMS Victory.

An hour and a half on the train and I stepped out a matter of a couple of hundred metres from the harbour, and a forest of masts, and grey painted superstructure of every kind of warship from Nelson's day to the present. For the Seniors discount price of 16 pounds 50p I bought an all inclusive ticket and started exploring. Firstly I took a one hour boat trip around the harbour passing destroyers and the aircraft carrier Ark Royal, a visiting French missile ship, and many more. This place is the home port for all sorts of naval vessels, minesweepers, icebreakers, cruisers, and their support ships. There are dry docks and warehouses and cranes all over the place. On land again and the next exhibit is a superbly restored sailing warship HMS Warrior. This is what the guidebook told me.

Warrior was designed and built in response to an aggressive French shipbuilding programme which saw the introduction of the first iron-clad warship La Gloire designed by the brilliant naval architect Stanislas Charles Henri Dupuy de Lome.

Determined to see off this challenge to the supremacy of the Royal Navy the then First Lord of the Admiralty, Sir John Somerset Pakington, determined to build a ship so superior in terms of quality, speed, size, armament and armour that it would be inconceivable to France that she could take Britain on in a sea battle.
When commissioned by Captain the Hon. Arthur Auckland Leopold Pedro Cochrane, on August 1st 1861, Warrior was the largest warship in the world, at 9,210 tons displacement she was fully 60% larger than La Gloire.

She also had steam engines which they used for manouvering and the propellor could be lifted out of the water when under sail.

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But impressive though this ship was, it was nothing compared to the historical importance of HMS Victory. This is the ship from which Nelson defeated the combined French and Spanish fleets at Trafalgar. It's amazing how many French people were checking the ship out on the day I was there.You can just walk on board and as long as you keep your head down, follow along through the gun decks and the crews' quarters, the officers ward room and Nelson's cabin. That was one of the quite plush cabins in the aft section where all those windows look out to the sea. And of course there's the spot where Nelson died after being hit by French fire. Maybe that's what the French tourists come to see.

If you've ever seen the film Master and Commander, you can appreciate how cramped life at sea in these vessels must have been, and what a sea battle was like, with smoke and noise and blood everywhere, and all in the claustrophobic atmosphere down below decks.

There were many other things to see in the dockyards, a museum dedicated to the people who worked here over the centuries, the ship builders and the craftsmen and women who built hulls, made sails, flags, armour plate, propellors, brass plates, masts, anchors, and a million other things.

There were historical relics from great sea battles right up to the present day, and portraits of heroic admirals and sailors of the past.

I'd had enough by five and took the train back to London. One thing about rail travel which I really like is that you can look down into the backyards of ordinary folk, so I spent the next ninety minutes looking at tiny yards and big yards, some with neat lawns and garden beds, and some with gazebos and add on conservatories or hot houses, and some with overgrown jungles and piles of rubbish and car wrecks, and clothes hung from high wires and flapping in the wind as the train went by. This is suburban England! Ya gotta love it!