Thanks to the law on Gift Aid in the UK, the ticket I purchased for Dad’s birthday last year meant that we could come back multiple times for a year. You can read about the previous visit here including more discussion on the fascinating law (🥱) that allows such largess (TL;DR they are forced to do it). Anyway, we were back again for a second bite of the cherry.
Last time we parked in the Gun Wharf shopping centre but this time I had booked a space via the app JustPark. As well as allowing booking in some municipal car parks it also enables you to book private spaces such as people’s driveways. This allows the space owner to earn some income and people such as myself to get a secure parking space close to a venue. I’ve used it a number of times to get a space close to a concert venue and it has been great. I thoroughly recommend it. Here ends the advertisement for JustPark!
One reason for going back was that there was so much that we didn’t see last time and so I had imagined that we would get more done this time but it didn’t turn out that way as you will see.
Mary Rose
Like our previous visit, we headed straight to the Mary Rose passing HMS Victory which was now completely shrouded as it undergoes conservation work. You may be wondering why when there is so much to see on site we were revisiting the Mary Rose. There are a number of reasons for this: firstly, it is amazing, secondly, it turned out that we had missed a whole complete floor on our last visit and, there was a new exhibit “Dive the Mary Rose 4D“.
The 4D experience (3D glasses and vibrating chairs) was showing the wreck from discovery to raising from a first-person point of view. You were one of the amateur divers going down into the murky waters of the Solent and helping to raise some of the 19,000 artefacts found and then helping to attach the frame onto the boat to allow it to be lifted to the surface. It was well done and a part of the story that I knew least well so good to have that gap in my knowledge covered.
Submarine Museum
On our last visit we had intended to go to the Submarine Museum a short hop over the water, but it had been closed. This time we made sure to go on a day when it was open. The journey from Portsmouth to Gosport is short and one that I knew well having taken the ferry pretty much every day for nine months while I was at University there.
On arriving at the museum we immediately went aboard HMS Alliance, an A-class submarine from the tail end of the second world war. It really did seem like something from a very distant age with all it’s analogue dials, cranks, handles and wheels.
We were taken around (well more along than around) by a very knowledgable guide – knowledgeable because he had served for five months on a sister sub. He said that he did six week tours and if I’m honest I don’t think that I could have managed six hours let along six weeks in those cramped conditions with 60-odd other men.
The guide fed lots of bits of information such as pointing out the scarceness of both things such as fresh food and water which were limited due to storage space. This led to the sailors wearing the same clothes for six straight weeks and not showering – partly because the shower space was full of food and the lack of water.
The worst part for me was when the guide described the escape procedures which meant flooding the end of the sub and then escaping through a hatch, remembering to breath out on the way up otherwise your lungs would explode. Mind you that’s slightly better than the latest subs which have no escape option. Now they are expected to sit tight and wait until rescue comes. If it comes…
Next we visited the Holland 1 – the Royal Navy’s first submarine. The most interesting thing about this was the short video that was shown showing how it had been saved and restored to its former glory.
And that was about all we had time for before the boat trip back to Portsmouth.
What we Missed
There is so much to see and do at the Historic Dockyards that we really have only just scratch the surface. Despite having been down twice now we still haven’t been on HMS Warrior, lots of small boats, harbour tour and several museums. Unfortunately, we won’t be able to come back again on our current ticket but will have to book to come once more to complete the tour.