10Jan2009: Day 229: Portsmouth Dockyard

Today we went to Portsmouth, about a 2 hour drive from here. It is on the southern coast. They have dug up the Mary Rose which perhaps you have heard of. It was King Henry VIII's main battleship, the first one built exclusively for the purpose of war. It was sent out in the early 1500's to fight an on coming fleet from France and it was unfortunately overloaded with more than 200 extra men. It was so overloaded, that when it got out into the sea, the water came in the open lower cannon doors and it capsized and sank, killing nearly 700 men. It sank part of the way into the silt at the bottom and what sank was preserved well. The part that didn't sink was eaten away over the years, but there were over 19000 items of every day activity that were recovered that was buried in the silt. One item that was very interesting was the surgeon's chest. The chest didn't fill up with silt and there was still air in some of the bottles. There was a bottle of frankincense, as well as a paste that still had finger marks in it where the doctor had drawn out some. There was Backgammon game, articles of clothing, wooden plates, arrows, and many other items that you would have expected to be destroyed, but which survived and gives the only look into the Tudor lifestyle of the common man. The guns they took off the wreck were very detailed in their design. Each individually decorated with flowers and lions and markings indicating that they were King Henry VIII's.

The wreck was found after a long search in the mid-1960's, and the wreck was eventually lifted out of the silt with divers volunteering their time in the evenings to dig out the wreck by hand. In 1982, they lifted the wreck using a unique frame and it was brought to a temporary housing in Portsmouth. In 1994, they started spraying a wax based material onto it and will continue to do so until 2011. The wax is gradually penetrating the wood and strengthening it. In 2011, they will start gradually drying it and by 2017 a new museum will be completed to house both the dried wreck and all its contents together. It should be quite a thing to visit. We were unable to get pictures of the Mary Rose as it's behind a glass that gets fogged up as the wax spray is constantly pouring out on it.

We also saw the Warrior, which is a steam and sail ship similar to the one that was at the Chattham Dockyards only bigger. The ship was from the mid 1800's and was very big. It had 48 cannons on board, and a crew of 700 men. It had 4 main anchors and it took 175 men 4.5 hours to pull up one anchor. Each link in the anchor chain was 40 lbs and each link was around 1 foot in length. Each anchor had 3500 ft of chain with it. So you can see why it took so long to reel it in.

The last ship we saw was the HMS Victory, which was Nelson's ship during the battle of Trafalgar. Apparently, Nelson had tracked the French fleet all over and eventually the settled into a Spanish port, when they tried to make a run for it with the Spanish, it Nelson went after them and attacked them at Trafalgar. When he was pacing the deck a sharp shooter from a French ship picked him off and he died three hours later, but they won the battle. Nelson didn't want to be buried at sea so they packed him in a barrel of brandy and swapped it out every month, for the three months it took them to get back to England. When the got him back to England and pulled him out, he was perfectly preserved and they gave him a state burial. The HMS Victory was a flag ship for 40 years prior to Nelson and it was commissioned in 1759. It remained in service until dry docked in 1922, where we saw it today.

There was a spire nearby that we wanted to get to as well, but we didn't have time. It is apparently the highest building in England. It is called the Spinnaker spire. It is quite interesting looking, but when I saw it, I was pretty surprised that someone would spend so much money on something that is just to ride up and look out windows on. I didn't think they could really have a restaurant in it, but maybe. We will probably go back down to Portsmouth another weekend if we have time, so we'll let you know.

Makenna was pretty good, but she has picked up this habit of running away, which we really don't like. She thinks its a joke, but we always respond pretty aggressively when she does it, but she really doesn't care what we say. There was one thing that she did that had a few people laughing. To see the HMS Victory, you have to go on a guided tour and we had already done the tour and were outside filming and taking pictures of the boat. Their was a guy yelling that if you wanted to go on the next tour that it was happening now and you had to get aboard. He kept yelling and Makenna finally responded by yelling back something like "yeah." So here he is yelling to people asking them if they want to go on the tour and she yells back - "yeah." He laughed and so did we.