The View From the North Bank of the Thames
After an excellent gluten-free sandwich and a coffee in the Starbucks by the Cutty Sark, I got onto the DLR again and travelled back to Island Gardens, where I walked along the North Bank of the Thames taking pictures.
Note you can just see the three masts of Cutty Sark in some of these pictures in front of HMS Ocean.
HMS Ocean Arrives At Greenwich
With a great deal of professionalism, the Navy’s largest ship, HMS Ocean, was positioned at Greenwich this morning.
She will act as a base for helicopters and Royal Marines during the Olympic Games.
The Cutty Sark Opens Again on Thursday
The Cutty Sark reopens on Thursday after a very expensive rebuild. They certainly seem to have done a good job.
I have some doubts about the amount of money spent, but hopefully, the money will be repaid in extra visitors to London and also if it has helped create a new generation of craftsmen.
The Cutty Sark is one of the few sights of London, I can remember visiting as a child, probably after a trip upriver on a boat. What sticks in my memory is the figurehead collection.
It is one of those sites that is worth a visit, even if you have no time to visit the museums. There is a Marks & Spencer and a couple of coffee places, including a small Starbucks to get a quick lunch and quite a few places to sit, so for me as a coeliac, if I’m close, I know I can get a quick lunch, in quiet times like today.
I do feel very strongly, that big projects should leave a legacy. And so, I think it is important, that this restoration should be used to train the next generation of craftsmen. I know there aren’t many Cutty Sarks, but I suspect that a lot of the skills are also applicable to other historic marine craft from Victory and Belfast downwards to the MTBs of the Second World War.
We are getting better at this sort of legacy and for an example look at CrossRail. Part of the deal to build the enormous tunnels under London, was to create a Tunneling and Underground Construction Academy at Ilford. It will initially provide trained personnel for CrossRail, but it also has a wider brief to train people for soft-ground tunnelling projects, wherever they arise.
It is an idea that should be followed.
A Titantic Waste of Money
There seems to be so much fuss about a ship, the Titanic, which had the most disastrous maiden voyage in history.
We’ve now got the original film being rereleased in 3D, which I will not be seeing.
And how much of my tax money went to produce the morbid exhibition in Belfast.
Remember that Titanic was one of three sister ships in the Olympic Class. Only one lived long enough to be scrapped, but the third, the Britannic hit a mine and sunk in World War 1.
All this is well-documented in the Liverpool Maritime Museum. Currently, they are holding an exhibition called Titanic and Liverpool: the untold story.
I know where I would prefer to spend an afternoon.
The Whitbread Share Price
Many realise that Costa Coffee is a subsidiary of Whitbread plc.
But do they realise that this Costa has nothing to do with the cruise line of the same name?
As the Whitbread share price doesn’t seem too strong, this may not be the case.
Alcohol Has Never Been Allowed On US Navy Ships – Wrong!
Anybody who knows anything about warships, knows those in the United States Navy are alcohol-free.
However, may years ago, I met a guy, who in the early-1960s had been an officer on a nuclear submarine in the United States Navy. They had been doing a joint exercise with the Royal Navy and he started the tale by saying that when the two navies work together, if possible all meetings between senior officers are held on Royal Navy ships, as food and drink is better. Especially on November 11th.
After this exercise the submarine went into Portsmouth for a bit of rest and recreation and to replenish supplies, before returning to the United States. The duties of the teller of this tale included getting the provisions. As one can imagine and especially in the early-1960s, lots of things they needed were not available in the naval base at Portsmouth, although they would be now. The only thing for which there wasn’t an obviously an easy substitute was the fresh orange juice. After all, Portsmouth isn’t exactly Florida. So the helpful men of the Senior Service substituted several hundred bottles of beer.
When he got back to the submarine, he was obviously rather nervous and decided to make a clean breast of it to the Captain. After all several members of the crew, if not all, now knew of the beer, so to ditch it would ruin his relationship with them. The Captain warned him not to do it again, said could he try a few bottles and provided he didn’t see any of the beer or anybody the remotest bit intoxicated, he would let the matter rest.
So where did they hide all of these bottles of beer, as you could imagine that secret space is a bit limited on a submarine?
They hid the bottles in the torpedo tubes.
Liverpool Comes To London
HMS Liverpool is in London this weekend and I went to have a look.
Note the red liver bird, which gives the ship it’s nickname of Crazy Red Chicken.
Has Anybody Asked The Queen?
They are talking this morning about a new Royal Yacht for the Queen.
Obviously, a lot of the great and good are in favour, as they like a good jolly and hope Her Majesty might ask them to come aboard.
I’ve been to one of her good jollies and I enjoyed it. But then you could say that I earned my invitation.
If you look at the list of royal yachts on Wikipedia, you’ll see that most large ones are owned by Arabs, with bad human rights records, except perhaps for the royal families of Denmark, Norway and The Netherlands. The Iranian president might have one too.
I think the Queen has said she only misses the yacht for her family cruise round the Scottish Islands and since the decommissioning of the Royal Yacht Britannia she has twice hired a small cruise ship called the Hebridean Princess.
So for her personal pleasure she has found a sensible substitute. According to Wikipedia, one year she paid £125,000, which doesn’t buy a very big yacht and pay for the maintenance.
But obviously, this doesn’t satisfy the great and the good, who get nothing out of it.
On the other hand, the owners of the Hebridean Princess get publicity that money can’t buy.
Queen Elizabeth Visits Liverpool
Not the person, but the cruise ship. Read about it here.
There is rather a war growing up about attracting cruise ships to the various ports in the United Kingdom. Liverpool is particularly well placed in that cruise ships come in directly in front of the Pierhead with the Three Graces and within a short walking distance of the major shops and museums. London’s cruise terminal is forty kilometres down river. Even Edinburgh, which has a deep water port at Leith, hasn’t got its act together and has even discredited its position with the farce over the trams.
Tourism is going to be one of the things that help to grow the economy. Are the various ports around the country, up to scratch?
The Anonymous Widower 