More maritime musings – Thursday, 7 September – Steve & Michelle's French Advench

If you don’t like ships, skip today’s post. You’ve been warned.

As nothing opens until 10am, and we were up, breakfasted, showered and ready before eight, we had a bit of time to kill. We spent it looking around Gunwharf Quay, a previous naval base now shopping precinct, sort of like Darling Harbour or Southbank.

I’m guessing this was the Old Custom House. It’s a pub now.

I like truth in advertising but I’m not eating here. Check the fare advertised on the bay window pane.

Then it was back to the Maritime Museum to look at HMS Victory and M.33. We punctuated this with a harbour cruise where we got up close and personal with the Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier, the Royal Navy’s newest ship. At £3.6 billion it’s also their most expensive ever and the biggest ever, dwarfing the entire dockyard.

HMS Victory

The Victory is an impressively big boat, with a lot of timber. It was also the biggest warship ever built at the time it was constructed (1765) at 3,500 tons displacement.

Fun fact. Although everyone associates Nelson with the Victory, he wasn’t the captain. Thomas Hardy was the captain. Nelson was a vice-admiral and Admiral of the Fleet. Victory was his flag ship. Hardy was apparently 6’4” (1.93m) tall, getting about below decks would have been a challenge.

I couldn’t get any decent photos of the exterior of the ship as it’s covered in scaffolding and hoarding. It’s undergoing a £20 million refurbishment. Seems like a lot of money, but what a great piece of history. Money well spent, if you ask me.

More cannon, wherever you looked, more cannon (104 total)

Some serious ropes, these things are 200mm diameter

Wooden ship? Let’s build a huge fire in the middle of it

The Victory carried 300 tons of fresh water, in barrels. The gravel is ballast.

HMS M.33

The M.33 was a monitor (low draught gun platform), built in just seven weeks in 1915 – or 10 weeks, depending on which sign you read – and is the last surviving ship from the Dardanelles campaign. It also fought against the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War.

While it has a good pedigree in terms of naval service, it does look a lot like a ship that was built in seven weeks. It contrasts starkly with the craftsmanship of the Victory and the Warrior. I guess by 1915 it was a numbers game.

The QE is 100m away in the background and dwarfs the M.33

Because it’s a monitor, not a battleship, it isn’t armoured and so looks a bit like it was made from recycled beer cans. Weighs in a bit like recycled cans too, 580 tons cf. the Victory at 3,500 tons and the Warrior at 9,200 tons. I like the colour scheme though. Dazzling.