2003 Letter from Portsmouth, P 1: Our campground in Portsmouth was on the outside edge of the city – and from there you could see several attempts by Henry VIII to fortify the harbor—three round forts at the entrance-- as well as more modern installations. Plymouth may have been more influential than Portsmouth in terms of big events beginning there, but Portsmouth certainly has been important in British (and American) history nevertheless. Most recently, of course, it was because the D-Day invasion was coordinated from here. Most of the ships left from Portsmouth and its nearby neighbor, Southhampton.

This was one place that didn’t seem to have public transit from the campsite to the tourist area. But the warden told us that there would be no problem taking our RV into the city. There is a big parking lot near the Naval Base where there are ships to visit. We really didn’t see a lot of the city itself. Our guide books noted that most of the town was bombed by the Germans during WWII since it was such an important port. There are several interesting museums, but we concentrated on the maritime connection. What is left of Henry VIII’s famous war ship, The Mary Rose is here. More interesting was HMS Victory, Admiral Nelson’s flagship.

We started out to see these things Sunday morning with the RV. We were going to try to park in the parking lots for the museums we wanted to see. We were within sight of the D-Day Museum when we saw a boot sale. We know what’s important. We parked and went to the boot sale (Americans, read "flea market"), and then just walked a half block to the D-Day Museum. It was interesting though not particularly enlightening. Their big "thing" is that they created a huge modern embroidered pictorial of the war – the modern equivalent of the Bayeux Tapestry. Not interesting to us. But Portsmouth had been very important in D-Day and there were other displays about that. Our favorite was a copy of the map used by the invasion planners to show the details of routes the ships would take and to plot the progress of the fleet. The original is still on display in the manor house that served as HQ for Eisenhower et al.

The most amazing thing about this museum is that Adelle was able to walk through it, and was still walking when we left to find the Naval Museum . This is on a different part of the harbor and it houses several museums as well as three historic ships. We visited Admiral Nelson’s ship, The Victory (1796). This is the one in which he died after being shot by a French sniper high in the rigging of the French ship with which The Victory was engaged. There also was The Warrior, an enormous iron warship that was built in 1860 with both sails and a steam engine; and the remnants of The Mary Rose – a man-o-war built by Henry VIII! We considered just going into the museum, but the price of the whole package was only two pounds more, so we bought a ticket to see everything that included a cruise around the harbor.

We’ve been in a lot of ships, so not much was very new. The Warrior, though, raised a question. Why is the Monitor, of the same vintage, thought of as such a big deal? In front of us was an enormous ironclad warship. Had the British government sent it to America after it was built in 1860, they may have been able to take back the colonies! The answer is, of course, the fact that the Monitor, though much smaller, had the first revolving gun turret. A docent on The Warrior told us that the inventor of the turret was a Norwegian named Ericson who first tried to interest the British in financing the building of one. But the British declined. "Why would we need a gun that could be turned to fire one measly shell in all directions when we have ships that can fire 50 guns at a time in two directions simultaneously?" So Ericson went to the Union Navy who thought it a great idea. Continued..........

 
Back to Portsmouth