Last days of Blighty

Following the ANZAC commemorations and return to Chichester we were well in need of a rare sleep-in, which thankfully we got. Wednesday was spent fairly quietly which was good after weeks of activity. We wandered Chichester a bit and did some looking for a few bits and pieces to bring home... we are not much for souvenirs or shopping as already noted so we didn't end up with much, and nobody has great presents to look forward to! Sadly I couldn't fit any walnut writing desks or vintage wingback armchairs in my fairly small gearbag. We spent the evening with family.


Thursday we headed to Portsmouth with father-in-law and took one last swing at history with a visit to the historic port and naval base. We spent a most interesting day there visiting the extremely impressive HMS Victory (250 year old flagship of the great Admiral Nelson, on which he died while winning the famous Battle of Trafalgar against the dastardly French), which now lives in dry-dock, and the also impressive Mary-Rose museum, where the preserved remains of the 500 year old warship and many amazing surviving relics are now on display after being recovered from the mud at the bottom of the harbor in the 1980s and having been through a preservation process which only finished at the start of this year.

The remarkable, and large, HMS Victory, still a commissioned ship of the British navy after 250 years. She was badly battered at Trafalgar but survived that and various other conflicts, including damage by Nazi bombs, and is now in amazing restored condition, albeit without full masts.

The ship is now pretty much fully open with access to all areas for the public.

Officer's areas, Nelson's bedroom and lower decks are all faithfully restored

I  can only think it would be so much cooler to see Victory sailing... but I guess she is probably too precious to risk putting to sea again. A brass plaque shows the spot on deck where Nelson fell to a French sniper's bullet in the heat of battle, and a lamp in the lower decks shows where he died.


The Mary-Rose is a very different thing indeed, having spent over 400 years at the bottom of the harbour before being raised, with only the sections of the ship covered by the mud surviving.

Graphic showing the surviving parts of Mary-Rose

Mary-Rose is now kept in a massive climate controlled four-storey enclosure with viewing decks on each level and many displays of recovered artifacts. While most metal objects and fittings have rusted away much of the wood and many more delicate items were preserved by mud.

 

 

An entire case of longbows

A pretty amazing piece of history and likewise an amazing recovery operation and preservation effort. The biggest mystery is why she sank in the first place, at the start of a major battle. The leading theory is that various modifications including more and bigger guns made her unstable and a strong gust of wind during a tight turn heeled her over enough to dip the lower cannon ports below the waterline, rapidly swamping her... only about 35 of 400 crew survived.

Dentistry in 1500 wasn't flash

Following these we moved on to a Battle of Jutland exhibit which was also good, and looked through the museum-like collection of the large antique shop that is also on the historic wharves. For sale there among thousands of other things were a brass lamp and a glass vase claimed to have been taken from Hitler's bunker by a British special forces soldier... allegedly the vase held Eva Braun's wedding bouquet from their wedding shortly before their suicide. The authenticity of the items has apparently been confirmed by people in the know, not sure how much to believe, but there was a fairly detailed explanation of how they came to be recovered... the price tag said 'POA'... given how much other similar bits have gone for I am guessing they would be asking in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for them.


Overall pretty impressed with the Portsmouth historical stuff, we probably only got around half of it in the end with the huge HMS Warrior also open to the public and a range of other museum buildings around. Not to mention looking at the rest of the town! Also a few miles away is the Royal Marines Museum, and I would be keen one day to get to the submarine museum which is in another nearby town. So much history so little time!


With sadness that night we bid farewell to cool new nephew and his parents over a nice dinner, and the following day did the same to our kind hosts, and bundled our gear up and were kindly taxied yet again to the airport. Long flights are never something I look forward to, but you have to do what you have to do. As you may have gathered, we made it home yet again in one piece.


I shall continue to update my previous posts with photos (if you haven't noticed, there are photos appearing now) and will probably post again soon with some additional images and a bit of detail on where I went looking at WW1 stuff, since that has been requested. No doubt along with a bit more rambling commentary and uneducated opinion thrown in for good measure. Stay tuned if you are still interested. Even if you aren't interested, you made it this far for some reason, and nobody likes a quitter...


Much love and many thanks to friends and family in the UK, leaving you all behind is only made a little easier by knowing we will see you all before too long.