We have left Oxford England, our last “touring destination”, and are train-bound for Manchester. In deference to our early morning “red-eye” flight we have booked a room near the airport far from the city-center. Neither of us are looking forward to the upcoming 18 hours of travel. However our house, family, and friends beckon so the end certainly justifies the means.

My last series of posts were from our tour of 3 remarkable sailing warships on May 16th. I felt that each ship deserved detailed discussion and I did not want to load up all three on the same day. We have not been idle since the 16th, so here is a summary of our wandering since then.

On the 17th we took a day trip by train to Winchester. The Cathedral dates to the 11th Century and is one of the largest in Europe. A discerning eye reveals that there are architectural features from both the English Gothic (high peaked arches) and earlier Norman periods (lower round arches).

Jane Austin is buried here, but curiously there is no mention of her fame as an author. Perhaps the culture of the time considered such undertaking by women “unseemly”.

Issac Walton’s grave is also found within the Cathedral. His 1653 “best selling” treatise on fishing, The Compleat Angler, is still in print. Among quotes attributed to him are, “I have laid aside business, and gone a-fishing.” and, “Angling may be said to be so like the mathematics that it can never be fully learned.”

Six decorative funerary chests are found within the Cathedral, three on each side of the presbytery before the high alter.

There were originally at least 8 of these chests, containing the remains of an 8 ancient kings, 2 bishops, and 11th Century Queen Emma of Normandy. In 1642 during England’s Civil War Oliver Cromwell’s troops sacked the Cathedral smashing all but 6 of the chests, scattering the contents of all the chests.

It was impossible for church officials to determine who’s bones belonged in which chest so the six chests have held a mixture of remains for nearly 400 years. This year anthropologists and geneticists have undertaken the task of identifying the remains and properly sorting them.

Almost immediately after its construction the Cathedral began to slowly sink. It’s foundations had been laid in a peat bog instead upon stone located another 8-10 feet below. Conventional efforts to underpin the piers proved impossible. As soon as workers excavated along any part of the foundation the hole would fill with water. The entire structure was in serious peril of collapse. In places the waviness of the floor and bowing of the walls are obvious to the eye.

In desperation, deep sea diver William Walker was employed. Between 1906 and 1911 he worked entirely alone under 30 feet of water, and solely by touch. He hand laid over 25,000 bags of concrete under the Cathedral’s foundations. He is credited with being the single handed savior of Winchester Cathedral.

Winchester is also the home of the Great Hall of Winchester Castle. It is all that remains of the castle and was constructed in 1067 shortly after William the Conqueror’s victory at the Battle of Hastings.

High upon a wall is mounted a huge round table that was reputed to be that of King Arthur. It measures 18 feet across and weighs nearly 3,000 pounds. While it certainly is not the table of Arthurian legend, carbon and dendrochronological dating place its creation at approximately the year 1250. Originally plain, King Henry VIII ordered it painted in the early 1500’s as it currently appears.

We spent the 18th and 19th strolling the streets of Oxford. We attended a moving Evensong in Christ Church Cathedral (sorry, no pictures), and took in the somewhat cheesy tour of Oxford Castle and jail.

We also visited the Ashmolean Museum of History, and the Oxford History of Science Museum where there is a blackboard upon which Albert Einstein’s hand written equations are preserved.

Our visual highlight of Oxford was Christ Church’s Tom Tower, Tom Quad, and the Cathedral.

I confess that we could have better seen and enjoyed Oxford. However, travel fatigue has taken its toll. I intend to pen some personal reflections on our 6 week journey at another time. Until then…

Peace Everyone. Pete

Paraphrasing Charles Dickens, “She was the first of such battleships, she was the last of such battleships…” Indeed this is a fitting statement for HMS Warrior.

She was conceived in 1859 and launched in 1861 at the virtual direction of Queen Victoria who had questioned the readiness of her admirals to meet the challenge posed by France’s new armored battleship “Gloire”. The Admiralty responded with the creation of “Warrior” and her sister ship, “Black Prince”.

When launched Warrior was the world’s largest, fastest, and most powerful warship. For comparison, at 420 feet long and displacing 9,200 tons she was 200 feet longer and 3 times the displacement of HMS Victory which had been Lord Nelson’s flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar just 45 years earlier.

Warrior was capable of 12 knots under sail, 15 knots under steam power, and 17.5 knots (over 20mph) under the combination of sail and steam. To reduce drag and enhance her speed under sail her smoke stacks retracted into the deck and her massive propeller was hoisted into a hull recess. The hoisting of the prop, as well as the anchors (the largest manually raised in history) required the effort of 500 of her crew.

Some of Warrior’s innovations of the first order were her armored iron-plate hull, the largest (26 ton) hoistable propeller ever made, and her compliment of rifled breech loading guns.

She was essentially invulnerable to attack by any other ship of that day. Yet she was still a sailing ship. In ten years Great Britain would launch its first mastless warship, HMS Devastation, which featured larger guns mounted in swiveling turrets. Warrior’s sail rigging meant that she was limited to smaller conventional gun placements down her sides.

Whereas Victory served as a ship-of-the-line in active duty for nearly 50 years, Warrior became obsolete in 10!

Warrior never fired her guns in anger. She was retired from first line duty in 1871 thereafter serving in secondary capacities until her masts were found to be rotten and were removed in 1883. She became a storage hulk in 1900, and for 50 years after 1927 she was a floating oil storage platform. Her salvage and restoration began in 1979, a decade long project intended to return her to 1862 trim… including the “brig”.

Her masts, many of her guns, rigging, fittings, her engines and boilers are very convincing reproductions. The excellent tour allowed access to most of the ship and questions could be addressed to knowledgeable volunteers dressed in Victorian attire. In response to my questions one such lady dressed in hooped skirts directed me in the operation of the breech loading mechanism of one of the cannons. Warrior is visited by over 250,000 people each year.

This concludes my three day posting cycle on the vessels of Historic Portsmouth Harbour. I am typing this in Oxford England on the evening of May 19th. Tomorrow morning we train to Manchester where we will spend the night of the 20th, departing the morning of the 21st for home.

Peace Everyone. Pete

In planning this trip I looked forward to spending a day in historical Portsmouth Harbor. The wharves feature a number of museums and attractions. However, for me there were but three items of interest and each was a battleship considered a creation of the “cutting edge” technology of its time. They were King Henry VIII’s 16th Century “Mary Rose”, Admiral Horatio Nelson’s 1805 flagship “Victory”, and Queen Victoria’s 1860 ironclad, the “Warrior”. It was remarkable to see the strides in defense and lethality that were made in the years separating each of these leviathans. It was just as remarkable that these vessels lay within a few hundred feet of each other.

First the Mary Rose:

She was launched from Portsmouth England in 1511 as a part of young King Henry VIII’s efforts to expand his navy and project his power across the oceans.

She carried up to 91 cannon and was manned by a combination of approximately 500 sailors and marines. It is estimated that her construction required over 600 large oak trees, the equivalent of a 40 acre forest. Some of these trees (such as those required for the masts) would be difficult if not impossible to secure today.

She was approximately 40 feet wide at the beam and her keel was over 100 feet long, although she was certainly much longer overall. The exact dimensions have been lost to history.

The Mary Rose would have been one of the earliest ships capable of attack by a cannon broadside. However her primary offense remained the tried and true technique of close, grapple, and board the enemy ship. Heavy reliance was still placed upon longbow archers firing from raised platforms at the ends of the ship. The English longbow archer was able to accurately fire up to 15 arrows a minute at the enemy from 200 yards!

In 1545 the Mary Rose sank in battle, not because of enemy action but because a gust of wind caught her sails immediately after she launched a broadside. The ship heeled over and the open gun ports allowed water to rush in. She sank within minutes, taking all but 35 of her crew to an unmarked watery grave.

In 1836 an early deep-sea diver was hired by fishermen to investigate a hazard that was snagging their nets. He uncovered the first signs of Mary Rose seen in nearly 300 years. She remained undisturbed for another 150 years before serious salvage efforts were undertaken in the 1970’s. That ocean salvage operation remains the most expensive and difficult ever undertaken.

Most of the Mary Rose was consumed by rot and sea creatures. However a significant portion of her hull, stores, and the remains of 179 of her crew were recovered. The excavation was so complete that even the bones of a rat and the ship’s dog were preserved and cataloged.

Forensic examinations determined all the crew were male, the youngest being age 10 and the oldest over 60. Facial reconstructions were accomplished of a number of the crew. Human remains, including a complete skeleton are displayed.

The main efforts to raise the ship occurred between 1979 and 1982, involving over 500 volunteers and over 22,000 dive hours. Even the Prince of Wales personally participated in dives on the wreck. Her preservation out of the water was to then take another 34 years. In all over 26,000 items have been secured, cataloged, and preserved. Dives continue to this day recovering more artifacts of the vessel. She is considered a national treasure and is on display in a high-tech environment that utilizes temperature and humidity controls and holographic imaging.

Significant to the experience, everything on display is an original artifact and not a replica.

Next, Nelson’s flagship, Victory. Until then…

Peace Everyone. Pete