A popular tourist attraction in this hometown of the Royal Navy, Portsmouth Historic Dockyard traces its history back to 1495 and the construction of the first dry dock here. Over the succeeding centuries, the royal dockyard expanded significantly, becoming one of the UK's principal naval bases and the largest industrial complex in the world by 1803. Described as a 'town within a town', Portsmouth Dockyard included churches, schools, a mortuary, shops, surgeries, and a fire station.
The keel of the famous Tudor warship Mary Rose was laid at Portsmouth in 1510 and, in 1512, Portsmouth was appointed a building centre for the King's ships. As the dockyard expanded and kept pace with technological changes in shipbuilding, from sail to steam, the buildings and docks of the medieval dockyard were replaced by more modern structures. Queen Victoria personally opened the modernised shipbuilding complex in 1848; however, by the mid-1860s, the dockyard had become outdated as the size of warships continued to grow and another expansion program was launched. The dockyard entered the modern age in 1905 with the construction of HMS Dreadnought, the world's first all big gun battleship over the course of a mere 366 days.
Portsmouth Dockyard supported countless conflicts involving the Royal Navy through the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. As a major base and centre for shipbuilding and ship repair, the dockyard was targeted repeatedly by German bombers during the Second World War, suffering extensive damage. During the postwar years, the dockyard focused on modernising the Royal Navy's fleet for the nuclear and missile era and, in 1982, was instrumental in provisioning and dispatching the task force sent to recapture the Falkland Islands from Argentine forces under Operation Corporate. Today, Portsmouth Dockyard remains an active naval base, home to 60% of the Royal Navy's fleet, including the two new, 65,000-ton Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers and numerous destroyers, frigates, and patrol craft.
Portsmouth Historic Dockyard comprises a portion of Her Majesty's Naval Base (HMNB) Portsmouth and is managed by the National Museum of the Royal Navy, with the Portsmouth Naval Base Property Trust responsible for the maintenance of all historic buildings within the perimeter of the historic dockyard. First opened to the public in 1911, Portsmouth Historic Dockyard is home to a number of historic vessels including, most famously, Lord Nelson's flagship, HMS Victory; the preserved wreck of the Tudor warship Mary Rose; the Victorian-era iron-hulled, armoured frigate HMS Warrior; and the First World War monitor HMS M33.
Photos taken 12-14 October 2019
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| The Victory Gate entrance to Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, off Queen Street. Victory Gate was constructed between 1704 and 1711. |
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The front and reverse sides of a Full Navy Ticket for one adult, providing access to all historic ships, museum galleries, and attractions of the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, admission to the Royal Navy Submarine Museum and Explosion! The Museum of Naval Firepower, as well as the harbour tour and use of the cross-harbour waterbus. The ticket is good for unlimited visits for one year from date of validation.
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A statue of Robert Falcon Scott RN CVO, 6 June 1868 - 29 March 1912, stands beside the Porter's Lodge, facing toward Portsmouth harbour. The statue, sculpted by Kathleen, Lady Scott, in 1915 commemorates Scott's fatal journey of discovery to the South Pole. The plaque on the base quotes a passage from Scott's journal found eight months after he died trying to return: 'The gale is howling about us. We are weak. Writing is difficult but for my own sake I do not regret this journey which has shown that Englishmen can endure hardships, help one another, and meet death with as great a fortitude as ever in the past. We took risks. We knew we took them. Things have come out against us and therefore we have no cause for complaint but bow to the will of providence determined to do our best to the end'.
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| The Porter's Garden, behind the Porter's Lodge. The dockyard's high perimeter wall can be seen on the right. The garden sits on part of the site of an earlier garden belonging to the Porter's Lodge which, like many private residences in the dockyard, was used to grow fruit, vegetables, and flowers. Over time, parts of this earlier garden were built upon and paved over until, by the close of the 20th century, nothing of the garden remained. In 1999-2000, as part of the Renaissance of Portsmouth Harbour Millennium Scheme, the Friends of the Porter's Garden laid out and planted this new garden along 18th century garden design principles. The garden features yew and box hedging, Morello cherry trees along the garden wall, and flower beds containing exotic and useful species commemorating voyages of naval exploration, as well as medicinal herbs of the kind that would have been used to treat ailments aboard the Tudor-era warship Mary Rose and Nelson's flagship, HMS Victory. |
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At the eastern end of the Porter's Garden stands a gilded statue of King William III (reigned 1689-1702), depicted in the manner of the Caesars by sculptor Van Ost. An enthusiastic gardener, William III's wars against French King Louis XIV led to the expansion of Portsmouth Dockyard. The high, brick dockyard wall was built in 1711 to keep out 'ill disposed people, inclineing to purloine'. The dockyard porter's responsibilities included patrolling the dockyard boundaries and property and preventing excessive theft of dockyard timber supplies by workers.
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The iconic Boathouse 4, with its distinctive 'sawtooth' roofline. (More information on the history of Boathouse 4 can be found below.)
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Some of the still-active buildings in Her Majesty's Naval Base (HMNB) Portsmouth. Ministry of Defence Police constables guard the gates to keep tourists from entering areas of the base still used by the Royal Navy. Sitting atop the high brick building is the stone Semaphore Tower, built in 1930 as a replica of the original 1833 Semaphore Tower that was destroyed by fire in 1913. In the foreground sits the waterbus that takes visitors across Portsmouth Harbour to the Royal Navy Submarine Museum and The Museum of Naval Firepower, both in Gosport. Also moored here are several historic vessels once operated by the Royal Navy and now part of the collection of historic vessels maintained by the Portsmouth Naval Base Property Trust.
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High Speed Launch (HSL) 102, the only surviving example of the 100-class high speed launches built for the Royal Air Force in the 1930s. HSL 102 was built by the British Power Boat Co Ltd in Hythe in 1936 and, like similar vessels, was used to rescue downed pilots in the waters around the UK. With a mahogany hull that planed over the water, these rescue launches were capable of speeds of up to 40 knots (74 km/h) and were used to rescue downed pilots during the Battle of Britain. HSL 102 alone saved 38 aircrew, including two German bomber crews, over the course of only two months in 1941 while patrolling in the North Sea; these exploits earned the boat a visit by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in July 1941. Displacing 13.5 tons and measuring 19.5 metres (64 feet) in length, with a 4.26 metre (14 foot) beam, and a draught of 1.06 metres (3.5 feet), HSL 102 achieved its high speed thanks to the three 1,200-horsepower Napier Sea Lion engines originally installed aboard. The vessel could travel 804 kilometres (500 miles) at a speed of 39 knots. While the two outermost engines were inclined to provide direct drive to the outboard propeller shafts, the middle engine faced the opposite direction and transmitted its power via a Vee-drive to the centre propeller; this permitted the boat to conserve fuel and extend its range by cruising on the centre engine only while retaining a high degree of manoeuvrability. HSL 102 served mostly in the waters off Northumberland and in the Firth of Forth during the Second World War, being damaged by a German fighter in 1943 and transferred to the Royal Navy for target towing duties. Paid off in 1946, HSL 102 was used as a houseboat until 1983, when it was discovered in a poor state of repair and given an extensive restoration before being relaunched by Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother in 1996. Today, HSL 102 is maintained by the Portsmouth Naval Base Property Trust and can be chartered for small group cruises.
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Motor Gun Boat (MGB) 81), built in 1942 by the British Power Boat Co Ltd in Hythe. Designed in collaboration with the Admiralty, MGB 81 was one of 105 such boats built, some of which were completed as motor torpedo boats (MTB). Launched on 26 June 1942 and commissioned on 11 July, MGB 81 was originally assigned to the 8th MGB Flotilla at Dartmouth in August. Up to September 1943, MGB 81 was involved in six actions against German convoys and armed trawlers. Damaged by enemy fire in February 1943, again in collision with another MGB in June 1943, and a third time by German shore batteries in September 1943, MGB 81 was renumbered as MTB 416 in late September 1943, with her armament being increased with the addition of two 18-inch torpedo tubes. Assigned to the 1st MTB Flotilla, MTB 416 took part in various actions in the English Channel, including support to the Normandy landings until the end of June 1944, being damaged twice by enemy fire and subsequently repaired. Paid off into reserve on 27 April 1945, MTB 416 was sold to a series of private owners and used as a smuggling vessel, sailing school accommodation ship, and a houseboat before being restored to her wartime appearance as MGB 81 between 1999 and 2002. Since late 2009, MGB 81 has been based at Portsmouth after being acquired by the Portsmouth Naval Base Property Trust.
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MGB 81 measures 21.82 metres (71.54 feet) in length overall, with a beam of 6.28 metres (20.59 feet), and a draught of 1.80 metres (5.90 feet). Originally fitted with three US-built Packard V12 supercharged petrol engines producing 1,500 horsepower each, MGB 81 attained a speed of 38.63 knots (71.54 km/h) during sea trials on Southampton Water on 8 July 1942. The boat has been recently restored using more efficient triple Caterpillar diesel engines of 850 horsepower each. The boat's crew numbered 12-14 men during wartime.
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The mahogany-hulled MGB 81 was equipped with a 3-pounder gun on the fore deck, a twin 20mm Oerlikon gun on the stern deck, and twin .303 Lewis guns on the port and starboard sides for anti-aircraft defence. The boat also carried a pair of depth charges.
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Seaplane Tender (ST) 1502, built in Hythe by the British Power Boat Co Ltd in 1942. Measuring 12.66 metres (41.5 feet) in length overall, with a beam of 3.58 metres (11.75 feet), a draught of 0.83 metres (2.75 feet), and a displacement of five tons, ST 1502 was used to ferry crews, provision, and munitions between shore stations and seaplanes moored offshore. She was also used for range duties and air-sea rescue work, being based at Bridlington in Yorkshire and at Alness in Scotland during the Second World War. Decommissioned from Royal Air Force service in the mid-1950s and sold to private owners as a pleasure craft, ST 1502 was acquired by the British Military Powerboat Trust in the late 1990s, stripped down, and extensively restored to her wartime appearance. Originally fitted with twin Perkins S6M diesels, ST 1502 had a top speed of 23 knots (42.6 km/h) and a range of approximately 240 kilometres (150 miles). ST 1502 is now owned by the Portsmouth Naval Base Property Trust.
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HSL 102 and MGB 81 moored behind Boathouse 4 at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.
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Steam Pinnace 199, the last surviving example of the 634 such vessels built for the Royal Navy in the early 20th century. She was completed in 1909 by J Reid of Portsmouth and carried aboard the Invincible class battlecruiser HMS Inflexible. After serving as the Admiral's barge during a visit to the United States, Steam Pinnace 199 was returned to the Boat Store at Portsmouth Dockyard and assumed harbour duties, including acting as the Captain of the Port's barge. The boat remained as a harbour duties vessel for the remainder of her career. Historical research has discovered that the vessel's machinery was originally fitted to Steam Pinnaces 208 and 224, while the hull, stern cabin, and funnel are from Steam Pinnace 224. Placed on the disposal list in 1948, the boat was purchased by a private owner and, years later, acquired by a group of volunteers who restored her over four years with financial assistance from the Friends of the National Museum of the Royal Navy in Portsmouth. Original steam auxiliary equipment was recovered from a yard in Belgium, while the period engine and boiler were sourced from HMS Sultan, the Royal Navy's primary engineering training establishment in Gosport. The original 1887 Hotchkiss gun was hauled up from the seafloor in a North Sea trawler's nets. Recommissioned in 1984, Steam Pinnace 199 was refitted in 2000 and extensively restored between 2011 and 2016. Today a part of the National Museum of the Royal Navy's collection of historic vessels, Steam Pinnace 199 is operated as in 1911, by a crew of seven (a coxswain, two bowmen, a sternsheetsman, a fender boy, and two stokers) dressed in period uniform and following drill of the Royal Navy in the Edwardian era.
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Sitting at the head of the dockyard's mast pond (excavated in 1665 for the storage of masting timber and small boats), Boathouse 6 was designed by the Royal Engineers and built between 1845 and 1848. It represents the epitome of Victorian-era industrial design and innovation and was the largest maintenance building of its kind, being used to repair and maintain the Royal Navy's fleet of small craft carried aboard larger warships. With these larger warships forced to anchor in the Solent due to the inability of the dockyard to accommodate them at the time, hundreds of so-called "ship's boats" were required to ferry sailors, supplies, and cargo back and forth between the dockyard and the fleet. Boats were hauled up a slipway from the Mast Pond in front of Boathouse 6 and in through the building's three large, arched doorways before being hoisted up to the first storey for repair. The first and second storeys of Boathouse 6 suffered direct hits by German bombs during the Second World War and the building was quickly but crudely repaired by the Royal Navy. In the post-war period, Boathouse 6 fell in disrepair until being renovated in 1998 to become the home of 'Action Stations', an indoor, interactive attraction for children visiting Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.
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Boathouse 4
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Boathouse 4, with its distinctive 'saw tooth' roofline, was still under construction when the Second World War broke out in September 1939. The war caused construction work to cease, and a corrugated iron wall was quickly installed at the building's south end, thereby resulting in the building being much smaller than originally planned. The large gantry cranes inside Boathouse 4 were painted in camouflage to protect against enemy bombing while the roof was completed. During the Second World War, Boathouse 4 played an important role in preparing small vessels, including landing craft, in advance of the D-Day landings of June 1944. The first midget X-craft submarine was developed under the cloak of secrecy inside Boathouse 4 and subsequently used to attack the German battleship Tirpitz in its Norwegian anchorage (Operation Source).
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Displayed inside Boathouse 4 is a Dghajsa (pronounced 'Dysa') from Malta, named Wilson Picket and built in 1960. Such craft served as water taxis in Valletta's Grand Harbour, as many visiting ships preferred to anchor away from the quays to save money on mooring fees. Traditionally propelled by one man facing forward and pushing on two oars, most Dghajsas are now powered by outboard motors. Many Royal Navy sailors on shore leave in Valletta used Dghajsas to cut across the deep, non-tidal creeks comprising Grand Harbour to make it back to their warships after having missed the last liberty boat; because using Dghajsas was considered a legal means of returning from shore leave, the sailors could stay out later without risking disciplinary action. Wilson Picket measures 6.3 metres (20.66 feet) in length, with a beam of 1.7 metres (5.57 feet). Typical of Maltese Dghajsas, Wilson Picket's high stem and stern pieces are largely ornamental but may have assisted with embarking and disembarking passengers. The decoration follows a strict pattern, though symbols, such as 'the hands that defeat the evil eye', vary from boat to boat. Dghajsas were often named after popular heroes or heroines.
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A Dartmouth gig, restored by volunteers in Boathouse 4. Gigs were carried aboard warships and used as the captain's taxi, being used mostly in harbour and usually crewed by four oarsmen and a coxswain.
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A view of the Maltese Dghajsa and Dartmouth gig from the mezzanine level of Boathouse 4.
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The interior of Boathouse 4 is a hive of activity, with a number of boats under construction, restoration, or repair in the Boatbuilding and Heritage Skills Centre.
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Moored alongside the enclosed dock in Boathouse 4 is Harbour Launch Diesel D49, built by Messrs Jones Slipway Ltd in the Scottish east coast town of Buckie in 1958. Constructed from mahogany and English oak, D49 measures 17.06 metres (56 feet) in length overall, with a beam of 4.11 metres (13.5 feet), a draught of 1.65 metres (5 feet 5 inches), and a displacement of 28.6 tons. Her Foden FD6 diesel engine produces 102 brake horsepower, giving a top speed of 13 knots (24 km/h) and a range of 370 kilometres (230 miles). D49 was acquired by the Portsmouth Naval Base Property Trust on 12 April 1996 from its previous owner, the Ministry of Defence's Royal Maritime Auxiliary Service Portsmouth, which had used D49 to ferry passengers and for the towing of small craft within the harbour and basins.
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Steam pinnaces (also known as 'picket boats') such as D49 were originally designed to patrol harbour entrances and anchorages; however, later their utility in transporting passengers and towing other vessels rendered them a general purpose jack-of-all-trades. With various shore establishments and facilities scattered around Portsmouth harbour, picket boats provided a vital regular ferry service for dockyard workers and naval personnel.
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Today, students of the International Boatbuilding College and Highbury College, both in Portsmouth, learn traditional wooden boatbuilding techniques by working on small craft in Boathouse 4, thereby ensuring that these skills are preserved for future generations.
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The mezzanine level of Boathouse 4 houses an exhibit, 'Forgotten Craft', which tells the story of the small vessels that were so vital to the Royal Navy. A number of these small vessels are on display, including several hung dramatically from the building's rafters. Here, the 9.45-metre (31-foot) whaler Acute, built in 1959, is a rare surviving example of the '3-in-1 whaler' type. Built from layers of wooden planks fitted at right angles to each other (double diagonal method of construction), a gasket of oil-soaked calico cloth and white lead putty was included between each layer of planking in order to keep out water. The builders used copper nails to attach the structure to the boat's internal frames and to the joints between the planks. Acute has been left in its unrestored state due to her rareness.
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Osborne, a steam pinnace built in 1896 by J Samuel White & Co of East Cowes on the Isle of Wight. During trips to Osborne, her beloved seaside residence on the Isle of Wight, Queen Victoria's royal yacht would anchor in the Solent and the Queen would board this small vessel for the short onward journey to the dock. The steam pinnace Osborne served on three royal yachts: Osborne, Alexandra, and Victoria and Albert III. Constructed from oak frames and mahogany planking, Osborne measures 9.52 metres (31 feet 3 inches) in length, with a beam of 2.26 metres (7 feet 3 inches), a draught of 1.06 metres (3 feet 6 inches), and a displacement of 5.5 tons. Her compound steam engine propelled Osborne at a top speed of 8 knots (14.82 km/h). Decommissioned in 1936 and thereafter used for dockyard service, Osborne went through various private hands until being moved to Portsmouth Dockyard in 2007.
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A Fairey Huntress captain's barge, one of 23 such boats built for the Royal Navy by Fairey Marine Ltd of Hamble in Hampshire and carried aboard the new guided missile destroyers and landing assault ships of the 1960s. Measuring 7 metres (23 feet) in length, with a beam of 2.59 metres (8 feet 6 inches), a draught of 0.86 metre (2 feet 10 inches), and a displacement of 2.3 tons, the Fairey Huntress's Perkins T6 145-horsepower Sabre inboard diesel engine propelled the boat at a top speed of 23 knots (42.6 km/h). This Fairey Huntress is believed to have been carried aboard HMS Fearless during the Falklands War of 1982, thereafter being based at HMS Sultan, the Royal Navy's primary engineering training establishment in nearby Gosport.
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| A stern view of the Fairey Huntress. This particular example was built in or after 1964 using the hot-moulding method, which involved stapling and gluing five veneers of mahogany wood over a mould, vacuum-sealing it in a large bag to clamp the layers together, and heating the moulded layers in an autoclave at over 100 degrees Celsius to cure the glue. Hot-moulding has been replaced by cold-moulding, in which the glues do not require baking to cure. |
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Two 'Cockle' canoes, a Mark 2 on the left and a Mark 7 on the right. The Mark 2 canoe was the first purpose-built special forces wartime canoe, being designed locally and tested in the Solent. It has a flat bottom and collapsible canvas sides which allow it to be quickly 'folded' to a thickness of only seven inches. Mark 2 canoes were most famously used in Operation Frankton, a British special forces raid on German shipping in Bordeaux, France on 7-12 December 1942, in which only two of the ten Royal Marines who took part in the mission survived. Only six Mark 2 canoes survived the Second World War. The Mark 7 canoe was developed two years after the Mark 2 and was constructed in three sections which clipped together. The Mark 7 canoe's aluminium construction resisted rot in tropical climates, and these canoes were used successfully to attack Japanese shipping in Singapore. The outboard floats located on either side of the Mark 7 canoe's hull were filled with ping-pong balls to improve the craft's stability.
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A surf boat, built in 1960. Earlier examples of such surf boats were used to undertake clandestine wartime missions due to their ability to launch and land on beaches in rough conditions. This surf boat, measuring 4.34 metres (14 feet 3 inches) in length, with a beam of 1.52 metres (5 feet), and a draught of 0.22 metre (9 inches) was carried aboard HMS Vidal, a Royal Navy survey vessel most famous for annexing the tiny North Atlantic islet of Rockall on 18 September 1955 on the orders of Queen Elizabeth II.
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| An overhead view of some of the small craft undergoing repair and restoration in Boathouse 4 by students of the International Boatbuilding College and Highbury College. |
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Another view from the mezzanine of Boathouse 4. Boats under repair or restoration in October 2019 included the 8.2 metre (27 foot) Devonport-built Montague whaler Westerman, completed in 1965; the 12.2 metre (40 foot) former admiral's barge and motor yacht Janet, built in 1892 at Cowes on the Isle of Wight; the 16-ton, 13.7 metre (45 foot) diesel-powered picket boat Green Parrot, built in 1953 as the personal barge of the Commander-in-Chief Home Fleet; and the 13 metre (43 foot), 12.5-ton Landing Craft Vehicle Personnel (LCVP) Foxtrot 8, built in 1959 and carried aboard HMS Fearless during the Falklands War of 1982.
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Fast Motor Boat (FMB) 43957, built in 1944 by Staniland & Co Ltd in Thorne, South Yorkshire, England. Measuring 7.77 metres (25 feet 6 inches) in length, with a beam of 2.29 metres (7 feet 6 inches), a draught of 0.68 metre (2 feet 3 inches), and a displacement of 2.5 tons, FMB 43957 was powered by a single Perkins P6M 65-horsepower engine giving a speed of 12-14 knots (22-26 km/h). FMB 43957 was initially assigned to the cruiser HMS Diadem as a replacement for a boat swept overboard during an Arctic storm while Diadem was escorting convoys to Russia. Restored with a red hull as she appeared when assigned to the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal between 1953 and the boat's retirement in 1969, FMB 43957 is fully functional and can be launched using the gantry cranes in Boathouse 4.
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A view inside the cockpit of FMB 43957, one of hundreds of such fast motor boats built for the Royal Navy and used as officers' duty boats or, on larger ships, captain's barges.
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Landing Craft Vehicle Personnel (LCVP) Foxtrot 8, built by Camper & Nicholsons Ltd in Gosport in 1959. Foxtrot 8 measures 13.11 metres (43 feet) in length overall, with a beam of 3.2 metres (10.5 feet), a draught of 0.46 metre (1.5 feet), and a displacement of 12.5 tons. Built as a Landing Craft Assault Type 2 [LCA(2)] and powered by twin Foden FD6 diesel engines, Foxtrot 8 was capable of a top speed of 8 knots (14.8 km/h). Propellers located in recesses in the stern allowed the craft to beach without fouling in sand and gravel. While her hull is comprised of marine plywood over a hardwood frame, the troop deck and helmsman's wheelhouse are protected by bullet-proof steel plating. One of four such LCVPs carried aboard the amphibious assault ship HMS Fearless during the Falklands War of 1982, Foxtrot 8 and her sister craft ferried Royal Marines and army troops ashore to retake the Falklands from the Argentine invaders. She was purchased by the Portsmouth Naval Base Property Trust in 1994 and is currently undergoing a major restoration.
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Dockyard Apprentice Exhibition
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The Dockyard Apprentice Exhibition is housed in Boathouse 7, a wooden-framed structure built by shipwrights in 1807. Boathouse 7 was constructed over the dockyard's mast pond and is supported by cast iron piles. The scene depicted here is of one of the dockyard's toolbox sheds, where shipyard workers' personal tool boxes were stored, where workers could change into their overalls, and where food and drink were stored. Such toolbox sheds were in use at Portsmouth Dockyard until the 1960s, when they were replaced by modern brick facilities.
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Wet, cold, and bleak, the toolbox sheds were regularly patrolled by dockyard security officers to ensure workers were not loafing. These corrugated tin-roofed structures open to weather were also used as a rest area for the short tea and lunch breaks afforded to the industrial work force of the dockyard. Tea was brewed with hot water obtained from a central source or heated over the coke fires used by rivetters. A conical tin can seen to the right of the mannequin is an example of the crude equipment used by the workers to brew and drink their tea. Toolbox sheds were frequented by cats from the Royal Navy warships in port as well as strays in the dockyard, who sought shelter in the sheds during inclement weather.
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A diorama of one of the shipwrights' shops and the tools used by the shipwrights, the dockyard's premier craftsmen. Shipwrights were responsible for ensuring that a ship's structure was sound and seaworthy. Boys wishing to become shipwrights were indentured to a master craftsman for a period of between five and seven years, during which they learned the necessary skills. Apprentice shipwrights were expected to be skilled in both wood and metal ship construction and repair, and were involved in a variety of tasks, such as ensuring that ship's lines were laid off correctly on the mould loft floor, setting up the slipways, laying the keel, setting up the frames and moulding plates, seating all machinery on board, and installing all fittings which pierce the hull of the ship, including port holes, hawse pipes, hatches, and propeller shaft openings.
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A display on boatbuilding. The traditional skills and tools employed in building wooden boats have remained largely unchanged over hundreds of years.
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A display showing a shipwright and his apprentice repairing a small boat from a Royal Navy warship. Boats were constructed using different methods, depending on their intended use, and required an assortment of different wood species, such as oak, elm, mahogany, and teak. Boats for the Royal Navy ranged in size from three metres (10 feet) to over 15 metres (50 feet) in length, from dinghies and whalers to gigs, cutters, and steam launches. The display shows the two workers clenching the boat's planking using copper nails.
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A display of shipwright tools in a mockup of a dockyard workshop.
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A display on the dawn of iron shipbuilding. Converting from wooden shipbuilding to iron shipbuilding took time, with Royal Dockyard shipwrights of the 1830s viewing iron ships as a passing fad. Indeed, it was not until the 1860s that the first dockyard shipwrights were persuaded to learn the skills necessary to build iron ships. Threatened by the possibility that naval shipbuilding would be given to civilian shipyards with more experience building iron-hulled ships for the merchant fleet, the shipwrights of the Royal Dockyards retrained and thereby maintained their jobs and their prestigious position in the Royal Dockyards. Rivetting was one of the new iron-working processes central to shipbuilding in the second half of the 19th century. Whereas wooden ships had been the sole responsibility of shipwrights, the new iron ships saw drilling, rivetting, and caulking work being carried out by semi-skilled workman under the supervision of a shipwright.
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A scoring machine from the early 1800s, one of the first machine tools employed in Portsmouth Dockyard to mass produce the blocks used aboard ships to handle rigging (i.e. block and tackle). A large warship like HMS Victory required over 900 such blocks and, during the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815), the Royal Navy estimated it required 100,000 blocks per year, a number that its suppliers could not produce. While blocks were made by hand until 1805, engineer Marc Brunel recognised the limited production then possible and, inspired by his time working in the United States, designed 43 machines to undertake all of the stages of block production. Brigadier General Sir Samuel Bentham, Inspector General of the Navy Works, convinced the Royal Navy to install Brunel's machines at the Portsmouth Dockyard and, by 1807, these were supplying all of the blocks required by the fleet. These machines were so efficient that a mere 10 unskilled men working the machines displaced 110 skilled blockmakers. Some of Brunel's machines operated for over 100 years, and 12 are now preserved, including five on display in the Boathouse 7 exhibition. The scoring machine seen here cuts grooves for the reception of rope into a shaped wooden shell, which is then passed over a special plane to remove any roughness and then polished by hand.
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A display on rigging and riggers, the men who installed all the ropes and cables on the masts and yards aboard ships. In the sailing ship era, the riggers worked closely with the sailmakers to rig the ships appropriately. Riggers used sisal and hemp cordage of varying thickness to produce all of the ropes, ladders, and running tackle aboard sailing vessels, cutting and splicing ropes and fitting the hundreds of wooden blocks, such as those seen here. The adoption of wire rigging has replaced rope, but riggers are still responsible for making slings, guard wires, towing wires, retaining wires, and rigging small sailing boats. Riggers remain responsible for the traditional tasks of moving and mooring ships into or out of dry dock and 'warping' (shifting) them to new positions in a basin.
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A display showing a rigger's bench. With traditional cordage, sisal and hemp threads were twisted together to create strong rope of varying thicknesses, depending on the intended use. Sailing ships required ropes of great length, produced in long buildings with large workforces. The first ropehouse at Portsmouth Dockyard was built during the reign of King Henry VIII (1509-1547), though the dockyard's present ropehouse was built in 1777 and used until 1868, when it was converted into a storehouse. While traditional cordage was soft, flexible and, therefore, easy to splice, splicing wire rope was more difficult and required a stable work surface and special tools, as seen here.
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A scale model of the the Royal Yacht Britannia. Laid down in July 1952 by the John Brown and Company Ltd shipyard in Clydebank, Britannia measured 125.7 metres (412.4 feet) in length, with a beam of 16.8 metres (55.1 feet), and a draught of 5.2 metres (17 feet). With a capacity of 490 tons of fuel oil (including auxiliary tanks) and powered by two boilers producing steam for a single reduction geared turbine generating 12,000 shaft horsepower and driving two propellers, Britannia had a range of 3,380 kilometres at 20 knots (37 km/h) or 4,828 kilometres at 15 knots (27.8 km/h). Her Majesty's Yacht (HMY) Britannia was launched on 16 April 1953 and commissioned on 14 January 1954, crewed by 276 specially-selected officers and men of the Royal Navy. After more than 40 years' service in which she steamed over 1.6 million kilometres, HMY Britannia was decommissioned on 11 December 1997 as a cost saving measure and is now a popular museum and tourist attraction in Leith, Scotland.
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| A 1:96 scale model of the Leander-class frigate HMS Andromeda (F57), built at Portsmouth Dockyard and commissioned into the Royal Navy on 2 December 1968. Originally armed with a 4.5 inch Mk 6 twin gun, a limbo mortar launcher, and a quadruple Sea Cat anti-aircraft missile mounting, Andromeda was modernised between 1977 and 1980 with the replacement of the deck gun by four Exocet anti-ship missile launchers, and the addition of Sea Wolf missile launchers, two twin 40mm Bofors anti-aircraft guns, and two triple torpedo tubes. She was powered by two Babcock & Wilcox boilers generating steam for two sets of White-English Electric double reduction geared turbines producing a top speed of 27 knots (50 km/h). Andromeda measured 113.4 metres (372 feet) in length, with a displacement of 2,680 tons, and carried a crew of 260 officers and ratings. Originally carrying a Westland Wasp helicopter, after the 1980 refit, Andromeda carried a Westland Lynx helicopter. |
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| HMS Andromeda saw service in the Persian Gulf, Far East, and UK waters in 1969-1971, in Icelandic waters during the Cod Wars (1973, 1975-76), in the Mediterranean (1974), and in the Falklands War (1982). She was decommissioned in June 1993 and sold to India in 1995, being renamed INS Krishna. Serving as a training ship until May 2012, Krishna was decommissioned for the final time after a total of 44 years of service and sunk as a target in the Bay of Bengal later that year. |
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A model of the Type 21 frigate HMS Amazon (F169) built by Vosper Thornycroft in Southampton between November 1969 and April 1971 and commissioned into the Royal Navy on 11 May 1974. Amazon was the first of eight Type 21 frigates built between 1968 and 1978. Measuring 117 metres (384 feet) in length and displacing 2,750 tons, Amazon was armed with a 4.5 inch Mk 8 gun, two 20mm Oerlikon anti-aircraft guns, two triple torpedo tubes, four single-cell Exocet anti-ship missiles, and one quadruple Sea Cat anti-aircraft missile launcher. She was powered by two Rolls-Royce Olympus gas turbines and two Rolls-Royce Tyne cruising turbines producing a top speed of 32 knots (59 km/h). Amazon's complement was 175 officers and ratings, and the ship was equipped with one Westland Wasp or Lynx Mk 2 helicopter.
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A model of the Type 14 anti-submarine warfare frigate HMS Hardy (F54), built by Glasgow-based Yarrow Shipbuilders between February and November 1953 and commissioned into the Royal Navy on 15 December 1955. After postings to training squadrons at Londonderry and Portland, Hardy underwent a major modernisation refit in 1960 and was subsequently posted to two frigate squadrons. Paid off into a reserve squadron in August 1977, Hardy saw one more short period of operational service at Portland before being moored in Portsmouth as a stores accommodation ship from October 1979. Used as a target for Exocet missiles, HMS Hardy was finally sunk by torpedo in the Western Approaches on 3 August 1984.
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A display of artefacts from the Leander-class frigate HMS Sirius, built in Her Majesty's Dockyard Portsmouth between 1963 and 1966.
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HMS Sirius's battle honours board. As per Royal Navy tradition, battle honours are passed down to successive ships of the same name; thus, the Sirius of 1966 inherited the Napoleonic era honours from the second Sirius (1797), a 36-gun fifth-rate frigate; the fifth Sirius (1892), an Apollo class protected cruiser;, and the sixth Sirius (1942), a Dido class light cruiser.
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The ship's bell from HMS Sirius, commissioned into the Royal Navy on 15 June 1966. HMS Sirius was decommissioned on 27 February 1993 and subsequently sunk as a target in 1998.
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A model of the Royal Navy's sole Type 82 destroyer HMS Bristol (D23). Intended as the first of a class of large destroyers designed to escort the CVA-01 aircraft carriers planned for introduction in the early 1970s, the Type 82 program was dropped after Bristol's construction due to the cancellation of the CVA-01 carriers in the 1966 Strategic Defence Review. Ordered from Swan Hunter in Tyne and Wear on 17 April 1963 and commissioned on 31 March 1973, HMS Bristol served in the Falklands War in 1982 and made several overseas deployments in the 1980s before being paid off in 1991. Today, she serves as a static training and accommodation ship for Royal Navy personnel, Sea Cadets, and other youth organisations.
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A display on the various specialty smiths that were employed by Portsmouth Dockyard in the era of iron shipbuilding, including blacksmiths, gunsmiths, chainsmiths, and anchorsmiths, as well as the trawlersmiths who manufactured iron fittings for ships. Fire-hearth smiths were even employed to make stoves and ovens for heating and cooking. The blacksmiths were responsible for making cutting tools for timber as well as tempering iron and steel used by the springsmiths and locksmiths, two other specialty trades in the dockyard. As the dockyard used thousands of horses to transport building materials and workers until replaced by trucks, farriers were also employed to make horseshoes.
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A display on the pattern makers and founders. Working from detailed technical drawings, the pattern makers crafted accurate replicas of items to be cast, using yellow pine. The casts were made in two halves. The first castings made at Portsmouth Dockyard are believed to have been done in the early 1700s and the dockyard's first foundries were established to smelt copper, which was rolled into sheets and then applied to the bottoms of naval ships to protect against barnacles, seaweed, and the wood-eating teredo worm. The first major foundry complex at Portsmouth Dockyard was constructed in the 1840s as part of the major expansion of the site, and it was at this time that the craft of the pattern maker evolved. Portsmouth was unique compared with other Royal Dockyards in that it had three foundries, one each for iron, steel, and non-ferrous metals. Founders created accurate sand moulds using the patterns made by the pattern makers; it was into these sand moulds that molten metal was poured to create the desired pieces, such as sections of pipework and machinery parts.
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A scale model of HMS Victory in a glass display case, along with a ship's carved figurehead, and a display of ship's badges.
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A carving of a lion's head from a ship's anchor cathead, a large wooden beam located on either side of the bow of a sailing ship and used to support the ship's anchor when raising or lowering it. Such items were decorated by the dockyard painters. These craftsmen served a five year apprenticeship, during which they developed skills in signwriting, graining, marbling paint work, and gold leaf application, and learned about different types of paint, their manufacture, and usage. While the painting of a ship's sides, bottom, and interiors was done by unskilled 'brush hands', the skilled painters were responsible for all decorative painting aboard ships and were considered artists.
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A detailed scale model of HMS Victory, Lord Nelson's famous 104-gun flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805.
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The ship's badge from the Tribal class destroyer HMS Zulu (F18), built in Glasgow, Scotland and commissioned on 7 September 1938. HMS Zulu was sunk by German aircraft off the Libyan port of Tobruk on 14 September 1942, suffering 12 men killed and 27 missing.
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The ship's badge from the Tribal class destroyer HMS Tartar (F43), built by Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson in Wallsend and commissioned on 10 March 1939. One of only four of the Royal Navy's 16 Tribal class destroyers to survive the Second World War, HMS Tartar saw service in the North Sea, Arctic, Mediterranean, English Channel, and Far East before paying off in early 1946 and scrapped in 1948. Nicknamed 'Lucky Tartar', the ship earned 12 battle honours over her seven-year career.
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A display on flagmaking. This work was exclusively carried out by women, often the wives or widows of Royal Navy sailors or dockyard workers. Flagmakers worked in the Colour Loft, which adjoined the Sailmakers Loft. While military flags are traditionally square, flags used at sea have been rectangular for the last 500 years. Flagmakers not only manufactured ensigns, pennants, and signalling flags for the Royal Navy, but also made standards for the Royal Family and flags for foreign countries, oftentimes involving hand applique work.
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Georgian-era Storehouses
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A row of red brick storehouses built in Portsmouth Dockyard between 1763 and 1784. Nearest to the camera is Storehouse 11, the first of the Georgian storehouses built during the dockyard's expansion beginning in 1760. Originally called the Present Use Store, Storehouse 11 served as a template for the two later storehouses (Nos. 9 and 10, seen in the distance), though Storehouse 11 featured higher quality internal fittings. Storehouse 11 was completely refurbished externally between 1988 and 1992 and internally in 1997-98, and now houses galleries and offices of the National Museum of the Royal Navy. During the Second World War, the middle of the three storehouses, Storehouse 10, was hit by a German incendiary bomb which destroyed the original clock tower and damaged the southern half of the building. The clock tower was rebuilt in 1992, and the building today houses the Babcock Galleries of the National Museum of the Royal Navy.
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| The covered gallery of Storehouse 9, the last of three great Georgian naval storehouses built during the Portsmouth Dockyard expansion between 1760 and 1784. Stores arriving at the dockyard would be brought into the building through the large arches facing the dockyard roadway; stores destined for warships would be brought out through the building's opposite side, facing the Camber dock, and loaded onto small boats for onward movement out to the naval vessels moored in the harbour or the Solent. Today, Storehouse 9 is home to the Antiques Warehouse, selling a wide range of authentic militaria. The wooden flooring in the gallery of Storehouse 9 is the original, laid down at the time of the building's construction in 1782, and many of the timbers used were taken from captured French warships at the end of the Seven Years War (1756-1763). |
National Museum of the Royal Navy
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The entrance to the Nelson Gallery, devoted to Britain's most famous naval hero, Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, 1758-1805.
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A modern bust of Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson by sculptor Dik Beech, made specially for this exhibition. The bust is based on the latest research on Nelson, most of it undertaken by the National Museum of the Royal Navy.
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A display of mass-produced Nelson souvenirs, donated to the Royal Navy by Nelson collector Lily Lambert McCarthy in 1972. As a popular national hero, Nelson was featured on a wide variety of consumer items produced by a rapidly growing British industrial economy exploiting steam power and machinery to churn out huge quantities of affordable goods, such as mugs, plates, figurines, plaques, medals, and other trinkets demanded by the public.
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A closer look at some of the mass production souvenirs commemorating Lord Nelson, including plaques, portrait jugs, and an ice pail.
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A white stoneware bust of Lord Nelson, manufactured by the Herculaneum Pottery in Liverpool.
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| 'The Battle of Trafalgar', by marine artist Thomas Luny, a former Royal Navy sailor forced to retire due to severe arthritis. The painting depicts the battle at approximately 2:30pm on 21 October 1805, when Nelson's fleet had smashed its way through the French and Spanish ships and the battle had descended into a mêlée. On the left of the central grouping of ships is HMS Victory, Nelson's flagship, still flying the admiral's last signal, 'Engage the enemy more closely'. To Victory's right is the French warship Redoutable, from which a sniper's musket ball mortally wounded Nelson during the battle. Luny's familiarity with the sea and his detailed historical research made his depiction of the Battle of Trafalgar one of the most accurate contemporary renderings. |
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Lord Nelson's tableware, from his cabin aboard HMS Victory. Used to entertain his officers, the large collection of silverware, crockery, and glasses was stored in special strong boxes when not in use. These items were carefully preserved by Nelson's family and friends and donated to the National Museum of the Royal Navy in 2008.
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A wax figure of Lord Nelson reflecting the most current research into his physical appearance. The figure shows a diminutive (5 foot 4 inch) Nelson, aged 47, in the final weeks of his life, before his death at the Battle of Trafalgar on 21 October 1805. He is wearing the ordinary 'undress' uniform of a Vice Admiral, which Nelson wore every day. By the time of his death, Nelson had been blinded in his right eye during the invasion of Corsica in July 1794 and had lost most of his right arm during an unsuccessful attempt to conquer Santa Cruz de Tenerife in July 1797.
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A special sea-going sideboard from Lord Nelson's cabin aboard HMS Victory. Designed by the famous furniture firm of Gillows, the piece can be broken down into small parts for easy stowage during battle.
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The sea-going dining table used by Nelson aboard HMS Victory was, like the sideboard, manufactured by the firm of Gillows and capable of being folded almost flat for easy stowage. It was around this dining table that Nelson gathered the captains of his fleet to explain his plans for the coming Battle of Trafalgar. Other items displayed here include Nelson's sea chest, used to store personal belongings; a seawater wine cooler; an occasional table from Nelson's day cabin; and an extending armchair dating from 1770 and used by the notoriously insomniac Nelson to take cat naps in his day cabin.
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The 'Sailing Navy' gallery in the National Museum of the Royal Navy. Housed in the dockyard's former Storehouse 11, completed in 1765 to stockpile spare rigging and gunnery equipment for the Royal Navy, the gallery features an original floor composed of pieces of re-used wood from old ships. Visitors are greeted by a large, carved wooden figurehead from HMS Illustrious and a scale model of the 74-gun HMS Kent, launched in 1798.
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A scale model of an unidentified Fourth or Fifth Rate ship of the line.
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The figurehead from HMS Illustrious, portraying King George III. Illustrious was a 74-gun Third Rate ship of the line, launched at Rotherhithe on 3 September 1803. With a crew of about 600 men, Third Rate ships of the line were the standard battleships in the Royal Navy's fleet in the early 19th century and served all over the world. Such ships were more versatile, cheaper, and better able to withstand bad weather at sea than larger three-deck ships such as HMS Victory. HMS Illustrious was broken up at Portsmouth Dockyard in 1868, this figurehead being preserved for posterity.
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A display of tableware recovered from the 74-gun HMS Invincible, wrecked off Portsmouth in 1758 and hurriedly abandoned by her crew. The items include a mess bucket, rum measures, plates, bowls, tankards, a 'prick' of tobacco, and spit kids. Tobacco pricks consisted of tobacco leaves soaked in rum and bound with rope to retain the flavour, while a spit kid was a vessel into which sailors spit their used chewing tobacco and juices, since spitting on deck was a punishable offence. Tobacco was issued by the ship's purser, who made a tidy profit from the sales; however, after 1798 tobacco was issued free of charge to the sailors, with each man being given two pounds (0.9 kilograms) per month. Although beer was the standard drink of the sailing age navy, as it was bulky to carry and often ran out, sailors were instead issued with spirits or wine. Rum, made from molasses, was mixed with two parts water to create grog, a half pint (0.28 litres) of which was issued to each man twice a day.
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A model of His Majesty's Barque Endeavour, the ship in which then-Lieutenant James Cook made his first voyage of discovery to the Pacific, visiting Tahiti, New Zealand, and Australia between 1768 and 1771. Designed originally as a merchant collier, with a strong hull and roomy holds to carry as much coal as possible, Endeavour was purchased by the Royal Navy and outfitted for Cook's journey. To supply her crew of 94, Endeavour was carefully provisioned before setting out, taking on board 34,666 pounds of bread, 9,000 pounds of flour, 1,200 gallons of beer, 1,600 gallons of spirits, 4,000 pieces of beef, 800 pounds of suet, 2,500 pounds of raisins, 187 bushels of pease, 10 bushels of oatmeal, 120 bushels of wheat, 120 gallons of oil, 1,500 pounds of sugar, 500 gallons of vinegar, 7,860 pounds of sauerkraut, 40 bushels of malt, 20 bushels of salt, 6,000 pieces of pork, 160 pounds of mustard seed.
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A section of the gallery devoted to the professional navy. By 1780, the Royal Navy had become a permanent force, with officers serving full careers in naval service and earning half-pay even if not serving aboard ship. Sailors were still employed on a hire-and-fire basis, being hired when a ship was fitting out for service and fired when the ship was paid off at the end of a voyage. It was in the 18th century that officers were issued with their first official uniform and awarded official medals. Proud officers wore these medals on their uniforms and commissioned portraits of themselves wearing their decorations as a way of celebrating their special status.
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A display on officers' uniforms and medals. The first officers' uniforms, introduced in 1748, reflected contemporary fashion and featured rich decoration, gold lace, and embroidery. Over the decades, uniforms became increasingly simple, with a recognisably modern uniform adopted by 1850. Compared to the officers, the Royal Navy's sailors did not receive an official uniform until 1857. The first medals were solid gold and were issued to admirals and captains in 1794 to mark the British defeat of the French fleet in the Fourth Battle of Ushant on 1 June, also known as The Glorious First of June. The Naval General Service Medal for sailors was not introduced until 1847.
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A display of some of the weapons used by Royal Navy sailors in hand-to-hand combat, which was a feature of most naval battles in the sailing era. As such, sailors regularly drilled with such weapons to hone their skills. Weapons such as boarding axes and pikes, cutlasses, and flintlock muskets and pistols hardly changed in 300 years.
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A display on the sailing warships of the Royal Navy, which by the beginning of the 18th century had been standardised in three main types: ships of the line, with two or three decks of guns capable of firing powerful broadsides and thus included in the line of battle; frigates, faster and more manoeuvrable ships with a single deck of guns used for scouting and attacking enemy merchant ships; and special duty ships, small vessels used for specialised tasks, such as bomb vessel, gunboat, or dispatch boat. On the upper left of the display case is a model of a bomb vessel, designed to bombard targets ashore with exploding shells. The model on the bottom left is of the 64-gun Third Rate ship HMS Lion (1709). The model on the top right is of HM Yacht Mary, which had been presented by the Dutch to King Charles II in 1660. The model on the bottom right is of HMS Daedalus, a 32-gun Fifth Rate frigate (1780).
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Another view of the 'Sailing Navy' gallery. A large bronze cannon salvaged from the wreck of HMS Victory, a 100-gun First Rate ship of the line lost in a storm in the English Channel on 4 October 1744, occupies a prominent position in the centre of the gallery. This Victory was built in Portsmouth Dockyard in 1737 and was a predecessor to the more famous HMS Victory on which Lord Nelson won the Battle of Trafalgar on 21 October 1805.
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A closer view of the 42-pounder bronze gun from HMS Victory, one of 28 such weapons in the ship's arsenal of 100 guns. The discovery of this gun and one other on the seabed in 2008 helped to positively identify the wreck of HMS Victory, which had been lost with all 1,100 officers and men 264 years before. The inscription on the barrel shows the gun was made at the Royal Gun Foundry in Woolwich and the royal crest of George I indicates it was made before 1727, making the gun older than the ship on which it served. During conservation work, investigation of the barrel revealed hemp rope wadding, gunpowder, and a cannonball, confirming that the gun was fully loaded when Victory sank in the storm on 4 October 1744.
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| The 4-inch gun from the destroyer HMS Lance which was used to sink the German minelayer Königin Luise off the Dutch coast on 5 August 1914. The Königin Luise was the first naval casualty of the First World War and, as a result, this gun is considered the one the fired the first shots in the war at sea. |
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| The breech end of the Quick Firing (QF) 4-inch Mk IV gun from HMS Lance, on loan from the Imperial War Museum. The QF 4-inch Mk IV gun fired a 14.06 kilogram (31 pound) shell at a muzzle velocity of 720 metres (2,370 feet) per second to a range of 10,590 metres (34,740 feet). After an eventful wartime career, HMS Lance was laid up at the Nore, at the mouth of the Thames, in 1919 and sold for scrap on 21 November 1921. |
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The entrance to the Babcock Galleries, showcasing the history of the 20th century Royal Navy.
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'HMS: Hear My Story' is a gallery showcasing the role and achievements of the Royal Navy and its sailors in the 20th century.
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The gallery includes cabinets with historic photos and artefacts, as well as interactive displays.
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A collection of historic Royal Navy recruiting posters.
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A modern bunk arrangement aboard a Royal Navy warship. Every sailor has his or her own bunk and a locker for uniforms and personal items; uniforms are stored in the locker and personal items in the drawers underneath. Sailors have a significant quantity of items to store in these small spaces, with the uniforms alone comprising white tropical dress, foul weather clothing, and a 'best' uniform and medals for important occasions. Although sailors traditionally wore uniforms when going ashore, the rise of Irish Republican Army terrorism led to sailors being given permission to wear civilian clothes during shore leave to avoid being targeted. Sailors aboard submarines have even less space for their kit, with some purchasing cheap civilian clothes to wear while on shore leave and then donating them to local charities before the submarine departs.
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A display on the Royal Navy's deployments overseas and its influence abroad. The display acknowledges the mixed reactions to the Royal Navy in foreign countries, ranging from relief and reassurance to fear and foreboding, while noting that the navy's presence at overseas bases has both brought jobs and wealth and swayed the outcome of internal conflicts. Items displayed here include a ceremonial tusk from Nigeria, a 1912 map of Malta, a 1929 midshipman's journal, photo albums, a baton, and a brass plate given to the Royal Navy admiral who remained in command of the independent Indian Navy in 1955.
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A chest owned by 17 year-old Royal Navy cadet Athelstan Arkell, who died on 31 March 1911 from scarlet fever in Gibraltar's naval hospital. Arkell's parents, who arrived at their son's sick bed shortly before he died, kept this chest as a memento. Such chests were purchased by young officers and used to store everything they needed aboard ship, such as a sextant for learning navigation, a telescope, and text books. The chest also contained a mirror, washbasin, and soap dish, while uniforms and clothing were folded and stored in lift-out compartments underneath. Cadet Arkell bought this chest from Gieves, the bespoke menswear shop in London's Savile Row, and took it with him when he joined his first ship, the armoured cruiser HMS Cornwall.
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A display on the famous Battle of Jutland between the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet and the German navy's High Seas Fleet on 31 May 1916, the largest sea battle of the First World War. Although British losses (6,094 men killed and 14 ships sunk) exceeded German losses (2,551 killed and 11 ships sunk), the battle was a strategic victory for the Royal Navy insofar as the German fleet was forced to flee back to its home ports and never again ventured out in strength from fear of being destroyed. The Battle of Jutland led the German navy to instead focus on submarine warfare against British merchant shipping in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to strangle Britain into submission. The display case includes a silver model of the battleship HMS Iron Duke, a then-secret book of drawings depicting battle damage to the battleship HMS Warspite, a sketch of the battlecruiser HMS Queen Mary, a rivet from the battlecruiser HMS Lion, a set of naval surgeon's instruments, a 6-inch gun tompion from the battlecruiser HMS Tiger, and a painting entitled 'Windy Corner' by William Bishop, depicting the key moment when Admiral John Jellicoe's Battle Fleet met up with other Royal Navy ships already fighting the German fleet.
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A Kriegsmarine (German Navy) Type M4 Enigma coding machine from the Second World War. Although the Enigma machine was used across the German armed forces, the M4 machine was the four-rotor variant introduced by the Kriegsmarine for U-boat radio traffic on 1 February 1942. The electro-mechanical rotors were set according to secret key lists distributed in advance and changed daily. Messages typed out using the keyboard were scrambled by the movement of the rotors, with the resulting cipher being encoded and given to radio operators for transmission to the message recipient to decode and decipher into the plain text message.
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A model of the Flower-class corvette HMS Bluebell. The Flower-class corvettes were the workhorses of the Battle of the Atlantic, escorting thousands of convoys back and forth across the Atlantic during the Second World War. The Battle of the Atlantic was the war's longest campaign, spanning over five years and witnessing the sinking of 3,500 merchant vessels and 175 warships, with the loss of over 36,000 naval personnel and over 36,000 merchant seamen. The Kriegsmarine's submarine service also suffered grievous losses, with 783 U-boats and approximately 30,000 U-boat sailors lost. Although the Battle of the Atlantic lasted until the end of the war, by May 1943 the Allies had effectively gained the upper hand through the introduction of more and better anti-submarine escort vessels, improved radar sets, very long range aircraft, new anti-submarine weapons, dedicated hunter-killer groups, escort aircraft carriers, and more effective anti-submarine tactics.
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HMS Bluebell (K80) was built by Fleming & Ferguson in Paisley, Scotland, launched on 24 April 1940 and commissioned into the Royal Navy 19 July 1940. After serving in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and Arctic, as well as supporting the invasions of Sicily and Normandy, Bluebell was torpedoed and sunk by U-711 in Russia's Kola Inlet while escorting a convoy on 17 February 1945. With her depth charges set off by the explosion of U-711's acoustic homing torpedo, Bluebell sank in only 30 seconds, killing all but one of her crew of 86 officers and men.
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A copy of the Western Approaches Convoy Instructions (WACI) from 1941. This secret document was a vital tool for commanding officers of convoy escort vessels, being corrected and amended weekly as the Battle of the Atlantic progressed.
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A scale model of the Landing Platform Dock (LPD) HMS Fearless (L10) in a display on the Falklands War between the UK and Argentina in April-June 1982. Designed to transport and land army troops and Royal Marines via landing craft, HMS Fearless was the flagship for Operation Sutton, the amphibious landing of UK forces at San Carlos Water on East Falkland on 21-23 May 1982. One of two Fearless-class LPDs, HMS Fearless was launched by Harland and Wolff in Belfast on 19 December 1963 and commissioned into the Royal Navy on 25 November 1965. She measured 160 metres (520 feet) in length, with a beam of 24 metres (80 feet), and a displacement of 12,120 tons. In addition to a ship's crew of 550, Fearless had capacity for up to 700 additional troops, and could accommodate up to five Wessex or Sea King helicopters. To land troops ashore, Fearless carried four 240-ton Mk 9 Landing Craft Utility (LCU) in an interior well dock that could be flooded, as well as four smaller landing craft carried on davits on the ship's superstructure. HMS Fearless was decommissioned on 18 March 2002 and scrapped at Ghent, Belgium in 2007.
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A diverse collection of naval artefacts, including a model of the aircraft carrier HMS Eagle (R05), the name board from the battleship HMS Duke of York, a Carley Float, and a collapsible Cockle canoe used by special forces raiding parties.
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A closer look at the model of the Audacious-class aircraft carrier HMS Eagle, which took model builder Ken Wells nearly 15 years to construct. Although the Wyvern, Gannet, and Firefly aircraft, the Whirlwind and Dragon helicopters, and the crew figures were made from kits, Ken built everything else himself from scratch, even including a smoke generator to emit smoke out of the model's funnel. A button that visitors can push electrically activates ship's lights and aircraft propellers. HMS Eagle was launched in March 1946, commissioned in October 1951, and decommissioned in January 1972, finally being scrapped in 1978. The ship took part in the Suez Crisis of October-November 1956, when the UK, France, and Israel conspired, unsuccessfully, to overturn Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser's seizure of the Suez Canal.
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A closer look at the Carley Float, invented by American Horace Carley in 1903. This simple life raft was formed from a ring of copper or steel tubing covered in kapok or cork and encased in canvas. The Carley Float had paddles, rations, and a survival kit and was quick and easy to launch from a sinking ship; however, it provided no protection against the cold or the sun, and men finding themselves adrift in a Carley Float were still at risk of dying from exposure, especially in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic. A calcium flare aboard the Carley Float would ignite automatically on contact with water, though this often helped the enemy as much as it helped rescuers. A Chinese sailor, Poon Lim, survived for 133 days in a Carley Float in 1942.
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An interactive exhibit about Morse code, allowing visitors to tap out messages between each other using the dot-and-dash technique of wireless communication. A glass display case contains a large builder's model of the pre-dreadnought battleship HMS Swiftsure, launched on 3 January 1903 and assigned to the Royal Navy's Dardanelles Squadron in the First World War.
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The Wireless Telegraphy (W/T) Office (later called a Radio Room) from the fleet repair ship HMS Resource (F79), which served in the Mediterranean and Far East theatres of the Second World War before being scrapped in 1954. It is typical of such shipboard radio rooms of the late 1920s and early 1930s, with main transmitters capable of sending messages up to 563 kilometres (350 miles) away. It was in small spaces such as this, packed with electrical equipment from deck to deck-head, that the ship's Telegraphist, or 'Sparker', deciphered incoming signals and tapped out new messages in Morse code. Although designed for one man and with all the equipment within easy reach, working in the W/T office when the ship was rolling meant that electrical shocks were an expected part of the job.
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A display of various calibres of naval shells from the days when big guns were the preeminent weapon aboard warships. The largest shell, on the right, is a 14-inch projectile of the type fired by the King George V-class battleships which played an active role in the Second World War. Smaller calibre shells, usually 5- to 6-inches in diameter, were used at closer ranges or to attack fast-moving aircraft.
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An Exocet anti-ship missile (circa 2007), capable of being fired from aircraft, ships, submarines, or land-based launchers. The model shown here is the aircraft-launched version of the Exocet that gained notoriety during the 1982 Falklands War, when it was used to sink the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Sheffield and the British merchant vessel Atlantic Conveyor.
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A Sea Skua missile (circa 2011), a short-range missile designed to be fired from helicopters against surface targets. Introduced into service in the 1980s, the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm has used the Sea Skua since the first Gulf War (1990-91).
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A Sidewinder missile (circa 1982), a heat-seeking, short-range air-to-air weapon that was launched from Royal Navy Harrier jets against Argentine aircraft during the Falklands War. The Sidewinder gets its name from the sidewinder snake, which detects its prey by body heat.
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A Sea Wolf missile (circa 1982), a surface-to-air point defence missile fired from warships. The Sea Wolf, designed and tested between 1967 and 1977 and introduced into Royal Navy service in 1979, served as a short-range defence against both sea-skimming and high angle anti-ship missiles and aircraft. The Sea Wolf missile has a top speed of Mach 3 (3,704 km/h) and a 14 kilogram (30.9 pound) high-explosive blast fragmentation warhead.
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The bridge badge from the Danae-class light cruiser HMS Dauntless, commissioned in 1918 and scrapped in 1946. The same badge is used on the newest HMS Dauntless, a Type 45 destroyer commissioned in 2010.
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A model of the Type 23 frigate HMS Iron Duke, laid down by Yarrow Shipbuilders of Glasgow on 12 December 1988 and commissioned into the Royal Navy on 20 May 1993. Measuring 133 metres (436 feet 4 inches) in length, displacing 4,900 tons, and powered by combined diesel-electric and gas engines, Iron Duke is capable of a top speed in excess of 28 knots (52 km/h). She is armed with a 4.5-inch Mk 8 naval gun, two 30mm guns, two M134 Minigun six-barrel rotary machine guns, 32 vertical launch Sea Ceptor anti-air missiles, eight Harpoon anti-surface missiles, and two twin torpedo tubes for Sting Ray torpedoes. Iron Duke's hangar and flight deck are used to operate one Westland Wildcat HMA2 or Westland Merlin HM2 maritime helicopter. The ship's crew numbers 185 officers and ratings, with accommodations for up to 205.
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A decorative brass tompion from the battleship HMS Queen Elizabeth, built in 1913. This tompion was used to seal the muzzle of one of the eight 15-inch guns when not in action in order to keep dirt and water out of the gun barrel.
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A temporary exhibition showcasing the National Museum of the Royal Navy's collection of Jolly Roger pirate flags, dating from the 1790s onward. The Royal Navy Submarine Service adopted the practice of flying the Jolly Roger upon returning to port after a successful mission, and the tradition has continued to the present day: HMS Conqueror returned to its base at Faslane, Scotland flying the Jolly Roger after sinking the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano on 2 May 1982, while HMS Triumph returned to Devonport naval base in April 2011 flying the Jolly Roger following six successful Tomahawk missile strikes against Libyan land targets. The flag seen on the far right was flown by the Second World War S-class submarine HMS Safari, which sank 25 enemy ships, most of them Italian, in the Mediterranean and Adriatic.
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| A Chinese Type 56-2 assault rifle captured from Somali pirates by Fleet Protection Group Royal Marines during Operation Capri in the Gulf of Aden in 2010. A Chinese-made variant of the Soviet-era AK-47 rifle, the Type 56-2 can be purchased for $800 in the arms market in the Somali town of Gaalkacyo. In addition to displaying Jolly Roger flags flown by Royal Navy submarines, the exhibition addresses the history of piracy, as well as the nature and geographic distribution of modern piracy which is defined by the United Nation Convention on the Law of the Sea (1982) as 'All illegal acts of violence or detention...committed for private ends by the crew or passengers of a private ship...on the high seas'. |
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The Jolly Roger flag flown by the Trafalgar-class submarine HMS Turbulent upon her return to Plymouth dockyard on 16 April 2003. Taking part in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Turbulent fired 30 Tomahawk cruise missiles against Iraqi military targets. The five tomahawk symbols stitched onto the flag symbolise the firing of the Tomahawk missiles in anger.
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A display board on the history of the Jolly Roger and the Royal Navy Submarine Service's tradition of flying the skull and crossbones flag following a successful mission. The practice was begun in 1914 by Lieutenant Commander Max Horton, Commanding Officer of submarine HMS E9, as a provocative response to Admiral of the Fleet Sir Arthur Wilson's comment in 1901 that 'Submarines are underhanded, unfair and damned un-English...treat all submariners as pirates in wartime...and hang all their crews'. Lt Cdr Horton flew the Jolly Roger for the first time after sinking the German warship SMS Hela on 13 September 1914. Each Jolly Roger flag flown by Royal Navy submarines since then has been a unique visual record of the history of the submarine flying it.
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A British propaganda poster from 1915, likely produced in response to the sinking of the passenger liner RMS Lusitania on 7 May 1915 by the German submarine U-20. Over 1,000 people, including 128 Americans, died in the Lusitania sinking, prompting vociferous demands by the United States for Germany to respect international agreements which protected neutral ships from attack.
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A pirate gun from Sarawak in Malaysia, seized in 1844 when the Royal Marines of HMS Dido helped to clear pirates from the Batang Lupar River. This gun was presented to 40 Commando Royal Marines, a unit serving in Sarawak during 1963-66.
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