I find that there is always a thrill to travelling by train in England. After all, the English invented the jolly things and for a long time, they were symbolic of Britain’s industrial pre-eminence. Public symbols of the out-growth of the Industrial Revolution, the Mallard and the Flying Scotsman, the climb up Beattock Hill and crossing the Ribblesdale Viaduct, in snow. Oh it stirred the heart of every kid like me, growing up in the 1950’s. So when I caught the train from Southampton to Portsmouth for a day of naval gazing, I did feel that little bit of electricity, coursing through my veins, even though it was only a little three carriage electric job, driven from the cab, not a great steam belcher. I was, after all, on the Great South Western line, and I sat back with a smile as broad as Brunnel’s, when the diesel engine gave a little grrrrr. Hardly a choof, granted, but enough to make the train tremble … well a little.  

We rolled through immense rail yards, rails peeling away like a banana skin, with lines to factories and sidings, the cadence of the wheels sometimes loud and angry as we crossed a junction. Then, we crossed the river Itchen, with its spread-sheet of boats of all descriptions, lying drunkenly on the mudflats. Napoleon called the English a nation of shopkeepers. He got it wrong, for they are a nation of sailors. All the way to Portsmouth there were yacht and motor boat clubs at every finger of the sea, billions of pounds worth of floating things.

So too, there were many bridges, those from the Nineteenth century, red brick and aesthetically curved, fashioned rather than constructed, while their Twentieth century counterparts were slab, dull and grey. Look out of a train carriage window and you often see a juxtaposition of the past and present, old rolling stock on rusty rails in an almost forgotten siding, stations once grand, with First and other classes waiting rooms, ticket booths and a station-master’s office, now merely functional, largely whooshed-through, and not an official in site. So too are the narrow little back gardens that front the railway line of the rows of terraced houses, many be-sooted by the grime of earlier times, the rhubarb and tomato plants still planted in rows, sheets and underwear still flapping in the machine made rush of air. In it live people, I dare say, who now hardly hear the trains, but used to be able to tell the time by them.

The train took me right to Portsmouth’s Historical Dockyard station and from the stepped entrance, I stood for a few moments and looked at the view, the doughty HMS Warrior, surrounded by moored little boats like a shepherd with flock, some venerable dockyard pubs, sheds of varying size, roof pitch, and hue, and the Victory Gates, the entrance to the Dockyard, now guarded by a single uniformed official in charge of vehicular entry. There was too the ‘smell of the sea,’ well more the whiff of exposed mud without is curtain of water, pungent but not in a nose wrinkling way, like the smell of tar and old timber. Seagulls the size of albatrosses mewed overhead, their size testament that here the pickings were good and plentiful. In the distance there was the grey of a gunboat, and to one side the iconic Spinnaker Tower which now dominates Portsmouth’s skyline. On the other side of the harbor lay Gosport, and out through the seaway in between, it was possible to see the upturned cheese-wheel outline of the Nineteenth century Spitbank Fort, looking like a rock for a thousand shags – something it has indeed become, for it is now a most unusual hotel!

The Historic Dockyard caters well for tourists with excellent entry facilities and all sort of advice and ticketing discounts for the many exhibition areas. I started my venture with the HMS Warrior, the 'Black Snake,' which when launched in 1860, was the largest (9000 tonnes), most innovative, and most powerful warship in the world, with more rifles and hand- guns than the posse chasing Billy the Kid, to say nothing of the main armament (40 cannon). Built of steel and oak, driven by steam and by sail, she was built around a central citadel of iron plate bolted to 18 inch thick teak planks, which made her impenetrable to the guns of that time, even at point blank range,. Mind you, raising her four 5.6 tonne anchors took 176 men twirling around the capstan, a good five hours. Her dominance lasted ten short years, by which time every naval architect had cribbed her best bits, and adapted and improved them in their own designs. Her descent to storage ship and eventually an oil jetty in Wales was swift indeed but in 1979, the Marine Trust eventually took her in hand because of her unique pedigree. In 1987, after an eight million Pound restoration, she was opened to the public, and has been a star attraction ever since.

The resplendent HMS Warrior at her pier

Warrior is a magnificent ship, from her carved bow-sprite figurehead, looking like Donald Trump in Athena’s helmet, to her Monroe-esque stern, (Marilyn, not James – broad yet curvaceous) she is beauty personified. The Captain’s day cabin has the elegance of an ante-room at the Ritz, although mind you, he shared his bedroom with a hurdy great 68 pound muzzle loading cannon. There is a huge central kitchen, a laundry, even punishment cells (previously recalcitrants’ were shackled to gun restraints) and she carried a Manager of Livestock so that the marines and crew had fresh meat. The two-cylinder steam engine gave her a top speed of 14 knots (17 with the sails up and a following wind!), although her 76 stokers and trimmers worked in 49 degree heat, feeding coal into her voracious furnaces. Little wonder they earned 25% more than able seamen, as the heat and dust made work almost unbearable.

I crossed the inner harbour on a ‘waterbus’ to visit an entirely different kettle of fish, the submarine museum at Gosport. I came ashore under the bow-planes of the HMS Alliance, a Cold War submarine that had spent much of its life in the cold Atlantic although her keel was laid towards the end of WWII with the purpose of long range cruising in the Pacific. Roosting pigeons and rust did more damage to her after she was decommissioned and lifted out of the water to become a memorial and museum in 1981, than the Soviets ever did, but she is now undergoing restoration.

Under the charge of an old submariner, we went aboard through a door efficiently installed in the side. Even with our small party of 20, we felt crowded and it was a trifle claustrophobic in the forward torpedo room. He took us through a voyage, possibly a little muted in colour as our party also contained a long ago pensioned submariner captain, and from time to time I saw in the old salt’s grin, a submerged recollection that went over all our other heads. There is so little room to move for the 70 members of the crew, even less so when almost every space was piled with food for the journey, with the most perishable the most accessible. I am certain that most submariners must make great contortionists and easy guests, hot-bunking, having only bird-baths for weeks on end, being reluctant to flush the sometimes ‘fight-back’ loos, never straying far from home. Then there is the noise, always noise and vibrations, the noise of the diesels when on the surface, the noise of the sonar ping and searching propellers when rigged for silent running. And always in the wash of red light. I could well understand the crew hitting the rubbity-dub and bordellos after washing off the stink of weeks amid the odor of diesel fumes, machine oil, pent up heat, bilge smells, and other human ones. And no doubt, the smell of fear, because while our submariner talked about getting out of a strickened submarine, I am sure few of us believed him, or even that he did himself.

Empty Forward Torpedo room, but on patrol it was all stacked with torpedoes and provisions

The Alliance was an amalgam of pipes, tubes, valve wheels and gizmos, tiny wardrooms and a mini kitchen. The central bridge area, where movies show us the Captain at the periscope,  crewmen at the aqua-plane wheels and regulating the ballast tanks, in a space not much bigger than two outhouses. Crew working in the rear end of the submarine often felt nauseous because of a combination of heat, smells, and tail-whip. Often, there were SAS on board during ‘probing missions,’ and sometimes they exited the submarine under-water, via the torpedo tubes – a tube within a tube. I was rather glad, I must admit, when our submariner turned an ordinary door handle, and a proper door in the rear opened, and we were out, under dampening skies. Good submarine weather I surmised, the water and the horizon smudged, the Spinnaker tower now obscured in sea mist and drizzle. I had a quick look at the excellent Submarine Museum, with a black four-man WWII X-Craft, which snuck under German ships in Norwegian fjords and dropped explosives, and I shivered again … and not from the cold. I hurried to the waterbus.  

My time had taken to sprinting, and I forsook the chance to look at the heavily plugged Spinnaker tower mall, seeing the waterbus spruiker, look a trifle crest-fallen. I leapt ashore, having time only for a quick glance at a beautifully restored WWII Motor Torpedo Boat and an Air Rescue Launch which would have brought incredible relief to downed flyers, and even hurried on past the Mary Rose exhibit, Henry VIII warship that in 1545 turned turtle in the Solent, sank with almost of her soldiers and crew, and was only rediscovered in 1971. I lengthened my stride, past even some very appealing Georgian Tea Rooms, with my stomach growling for a cream tea. Victory was near to hand!

The HMS Victory, in her dry dock. Keen aficionados can see her top masts are 'mizzen.'

Everyone knows of HMS Victory and the little Admiral, Horatio Nelson, and his famous creed before the battle of Trafalgar, in which he was killed, that "England expects every man to do his duty." I had previously been to see Victory two decades ago when her bow was swaddled in tarpaulins as restoration work was being done. This time her top-masts were missing. She is a national treasure in a constant state of repair, and at 253 years of age, no wonder she has had a little Botox and Collagen. First laid in 1759, a year after Nelson's birth, she first broke the waters in 1765, was commissioned in 1778, and delivered to Nelson in 1803 as a sultry 44 year old after already having served in a few battles. She was retired from active service in 1812 and lay around Portsmouth for over a century, before preservation work began in earnest between the World Wars.

I entered through a doorway cut into the Middle Gun Deck, and instantly you feel in stride with history, the oily smell of timber, garnished by that of rope, the low light of lanterns and sunlight through the gun-ports and you can imagine the swirl of smoke, the crash of guns and the shouts of battle. Victory, at the time of Trafalgar, was a 104 gun, First Rate, warship, and you feel her size and immense power immediately. Over 600 oak trees were used to supply planks for her construction, but over the years, many had rotted and have since been replaced. The Lower Gun Deck still carries the original planking, while the Middle Gun Deck carries the only Trafalgar-original 32 pound cannon.  The rest have all been replaced by fibre glass replicas. Each cannon weighed two-and-a-quarter ton and while the weight of her guns, masts, shot, stores, and 850 men, was balanced in water, given her age and her permanent resting place in a dry dock, she would probably have collapsed under her own weight, and hip replacements at her age would have been rather delicate.

I followed the stairs up to the Quarter Deck, towards the stern, and there on the deck is a small brass plaque showing where Nelson was shot by a musketeer from the French warship, Redoubtable at 1.25pm, while the Victory was breaking the French line. Then, the decks would have been strewn with debris from virtually point blank barrages. The dead were simply thrown overboard, while the wounded were carried below to the Orlop deck, beneath the waterline, where the surgeon and his staff worked amid gore and gloom. It is hard to imagine amid the elegance of Victory today, with the splendour of the Admiral's Great Cabin, where he planned the battle tactics and wrote his last orders and prayers. Captain Hardy's cabin on the Upper Deck, immediately above Nelson's cabin, is in keeping with rank, more austere.

Admiral Nelson's Great Cabin beyond the elegantly set Dining Room

I wended my way down steep stairs, through various gun-decks, stooping always because of the limited space, and made my way through the Lower Gun Deck. Here, each day 560 men sat down to dinner amid guns, cutlasses, personal possessions and slung hammocks, and ate their salted beef and drank their daily ration of grog. Further below, there was the Orlop Deck and the redolent spot where Nelson died at 4.30pm on 21 October, 1805. There is a dimly light painting, a copy of the original work by Arthur Devis, which graphically illustrates the solemn scene and is far more evocative than a more heroic (and well-known) depiction of Nelson's wounding on the Quarter Deck, by the artist Benjamin West. After his death, Nelson was stripped and put into a barrel filled with Brandy, which preserved his body for the return to Portsmouth. Two months later amid much pomp as befitting the hero of Trafalgar, Nelson was laid in Westminster Abbey, in London.

The spot where Nelson fell marked by a brass plaque

A landing party of rowdy French school-kids had come aboard, in a manner that their fore-bears never had, and for a while I delighted in hearing their teacher pronounce Nelson with a lovely Gallic long 'o,' with the last letter of his name going right up his nose. But my time was now very short before the train back to Southampton. Still, enough time to see the "Victory Gallery and the Trafalgar Experience."

There you find an excellent explanation of the battle tactics and the vital role played by the erstwhile Admiral Collingwood, in many ways, the real victor of Trafalgar, as well as a sound and light show, set on a gun-deck. But the highlight was the brilliant 'panorama' scene – the movie 'presentation' of its day – depicting the Battle of Trafalgar at 2.00pm, when in effect, victory could be claimed although the fighting was not yet done. The huge, semi-circular canvas, done by the most eminent marine artist of his day, the then 79 year old W.L Wyllie, aided by his daughter, depicts the Victory raking the Redoubtable as it breaks through the French line, as seen from the stern of the French warship, Neptune, and shows the battle in its entirety. The highly detailed painting was all methodically researched by Wyllie from contemporary charts and diaries, and visits to familiarize himself with the colours of the sea and sky at Cape Trafalgar. The painting took almost a year to complete, before it was opened by King George V, in 1930, and was immediately visited by huge crowds. It is still very much a wonder today.

I looked at my watch again and gave Victory, and the large wooden bow-sprite figurehead of Nelson, be-topped by an Admiral's hat, one eye bright blue, the other covered by just opaque skin and not the signature black patch, a fleeting farewell glance. Twenty minutes to the station, and besides, British Rail was always late! Easy! And then, off to my right, there was the signboard of the Georgian Tearooms. My pace slowed and I looked at my watch once more. Ten minutes for tea and scones with clotted Devon cream and strawberry jam from Hampshire. What a dilemma. I know what Drake would have done, you know, playing bowls and still having the time to beat the Spaniard, but what would Nelson have done? The telescope trick came to me as a flash of inspiration. During the Battle of Copenhagen, Nelson's cautious commander sent him a flag signal suggesting to break off the engagement. Nelson had merely raised the telescope to his blind eye and said "I can see no signal," and continued firing, something which ever after be referred to as "turning a blind eye." Nelson would have looked at my wrist and said, "What watch?" and turned into the Georgian Tearooms. I dutifully followed in his step … and ten minutes later, ran for the train!

Indeed, it was late, yet for quite some time, I sat in my seat and puffed like a steamer, while we sat at the platform, waiting to leave.

The Georgian Tearooms in the old naval supply warehouse.

Winfred Peppinck is the Tales of the Traveling Editor for Wandering Educators