My December 5 post, ‘HMS Alliance’ is a pictorial account of my family’s visit to the Royal Navy’s only remaining post-war ‘A’ Class Submarine. This is the main exhibit of the Submarine Museum at Gosport, Hampshire.
The visit, made in 2014, had been planned to include attractions in and around Winchester and Portsmouth and included Portsmouth’s Historic Dockyard. Here, it was Admiral Nelson’s HMS Victory and Henry VIII’s flagship, Mary Rose that particularly excited us.
In the event, however, it was another floating museum piece that unexpectedly ‘stole the show’. The vessel which surprised us by upstaging those two world-famous ships was HMS Warrior, ‘the pride of Queen Victoria’s navy.’
In its website introduction to the Warrior exhibit, The National Museum of the Royal Navy states:
Step aboard the pride of Queen Victoria’s Navy, and fall back in time to the age of steam onboard HMS Warrior. The very first iron-hulled warship, HMS Warrior acted as a deterrent to Britain’s enemies, and 200 years later she’s still a feat of engineering and an iconic part of Portsmouth’s skyline.
Visitors to HMS Warrior can explore the different areas of the ship, from the spacious wardroom where officers ate and discussed tactics, to the engine room where the air would’ve been thick with soot and sweat.
Here is a link to that site:
https://www.nmrn.org.uk/visit-us/portsmouth-historic-dockyard/hms-warrior
Those interested in learning more about this impressive-looking warship may access an array of information on the internet, including several YouTube videos. A link to one of these is at the foot of this post.
Rather than transcribe my own abridged history of Warrior, along with the events leading to its launch in 1860, its vital statistics, history and restoration, here’s a link to the respective Wikipedia webpage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Warrior_(1860)
Warrior has been meticulously fitted out in incredible detail to reflect how the warship would have looked in 1863.
Indeed, to those visitors stepping aboard her pristine maindeck, and venturing below, it appears that the ship’s crew have only moments earlier gone ashore.
They did not disembark, however, without preparing the ship for the public’s inspection. The vessel’s woodwork is lustrous, its copper and brass gleaming, weapons are stowed and ready, and everything is orderly and ‘shipshape.’
‘Weapons are stowed and ready.’
Here, then, are some of the pictures taken during our memorable visit – not one of which serves to do justice to this amazing exhibit.
Rating’s Mess on the sprawling Gun Deck
‘… everything is orderly and shipshape.’
Ship’s Magazine
If the above pictorial journey aboard HMS Warrior has whetted your appetite to learn more about this fabulous, and beautifully-presented exhibit, the following YouTube video, presented by historian Dan Snow will be the perfect place to start:
RAVEN MOON 