Seeing the Navy

Went down to Portsmouth yesterday from Oxford, City of the Dreaming Spires. I wanted to see an old friend who had travelled over from the States; and I also wanted to see the Royal Navy.

And by golly, did I ever. For anyone who gobbled up the wonderful novels of Horatio Hornblower as an adolescent, and then moved on in their 20's to Patrick O'Brian's massive Aubrey-Maturin series, it was an intoxicating time. I mean, last night I had fish and chips on The Hard! Aye, lad, these eyes have seen The Hard, where many an old seadog first set foot on English soil after years at sea; and me mate and I had pints of bitter in a pub christened the Captain Anson, so we did, to mention the namesake of one the great circumnavigators-- and he took the Manila galleon to boot, stap me with a marlinspike if he did not.

The Historic Dockyards are where a lot of great stuff is located. It is where the flagship of Lord Nelson, the Victory, is kept. Of the Victory I will say that it is both smaller and larger than I imagined. Perhaps it's "smallness" was because there was a Royal Navy aircraft carrier tied up on the other side of the quay. Its size was particularly evident once you got below decks; cramped, little head-space, but immense spaces spreading fore and aft.

In a strange way, the Mary Rose was even more interesting. This is a ship of Henry VIII's fleet that went down in freakish circumstances in Portsmouth Harbour, and was raised again in 1982. It is now undergoing preservation treatment for an eventual full-scale exhibit. Next door is a museum with the many artifacts found in its hull. In many ways it is more interesting than the Victory because there is such a wonderful slice of 17th century life preserved in the Mary Rose's wreckage, everything from longbows to men's purses to surgeon's supplies to horn spoons.

The rest of Portsmouth seems like Baltimore before the Inner Harbor, and without the wonderful "How ya' doin', hun?" attitude of the natives. In fact the natives of Portsmouth seem to posess some emotional black-hole that makes them the anti-Baltimoreans. So that's not much of an endorsement, to be sure-- but the Historic Dockyard makes it all worth while. As does the sea, and the views of the Isle of Wight...but I'll stop there. It is a sign of the remarkable and frightening way that all of English (British, even) life tilts towards London that Portsmouth hasn't been taken over by high-tech companies and artists' lofts and things.

In any event I have now seen the Air & Space Museum of the Sea, and more than that. It was a moment in which I saw the physical reality of what has long been a theatre of my imagination.