I don't know what accounts for my interest in maritime matters. Between my proneness to seasickness and my mal de debarquement syndrome, you'd think I would avoid maritime museums. I probably watched too many episodes of Victory at Sea as a child (it was the music, I insist), read Alfred Thayer Mahan's The Influence of Seapower on History in high school, and am probably one of five persons, authors and editors not included, to have read all 15 volumes (including appendices) of Samuel Eliot Morison's History of United States Naval Operations in World War II. I've also read his Admiral of the Ocean Sea. And much, much more, now that I think of it, generally naval stuff or exploration stuff, most recently Captain Cook's voyages. I've toured a dozen historic ships and toured navy bases. I'm even fascinated by container ships. This is probably the eighth or tenth maritime museum we've visited since retiring--Stockholm, Rotterdam, Barcelona, Wellington, Dubrovnik, Bodrum--Vicki usually sits quietly and patiently in the museum lobby, as she did this time. I've cut the number of pix way down. Nevertheless...
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| Main entrance |
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| The place is hardly dumbed-down, but there is much for kids to enjoy |
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| Prince Frederick's Thames barge; built 1732, last used by Prince Albert in 1849 |
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| Assorted figureheads |
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| In a big room devoted to Turner's Trafalgar painting: his only royal commission, but rejected probably for being insufficiently patriotic and glorious |
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| Better photo, off the web: rather than the heroics of Nelson, and national glory, it depicted the calamity and suffering of war |
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The Baltic Exchange Memorial Glass, from a 20th century building in London that survived the Blitz but not the IRA's bombs; painstakingly repaired and reassembled here, it memorializes members of the Exchange killed in WWI, but also exults the national, the seafaring, and the commercial; one of the largest stained glass works we have seen |
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| In a large hall devoted to a variety of miscellaneous seafaring devices, accoutrements, and stuff |
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| Ditto |
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| South Seas dress |
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Many south sea islanders do not regard the British fondly nor think of the (European) age of exploration as glorious; the Brits are way ahead of some other nations in recognizing the errors of their ways in former times... |
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Johann Zoffany, Death of Captain James Cook, 1798; killed by Hawaiians who finally figured out he wasn't a god |
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| Cooks's anchorage at Tahiti, to observe the transit of Venus; the description speaks of the "warm" welcome by the Tahitians; "warm" indeed, inasmuch as the crew got VD, transmitted from the French who had preceded them |
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| Hodges' famous portrait of of Cook |
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| The upper floor of the great building is given to the Great Map, essentially a play/exercise area for the kiddies |
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| Among the many things that fascinate me are the ship-building efforts that must have occupied the Brits from Elizabethan times onward into the age of discovery and imperialism...here William Daniell, The Mast House and Brunswick Dock at Blackwall, 1803 |
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Some of the goodies brought back from the "new" world and the Pacific |
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| As one might expect, the place is loaded with ship models... |
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| Bust of John Paul Jones...what he's doing here is a mystery; he went to sea at the age of 13, worked on slave ships, quit in revulsion and emigrated to the Colonies; was their naval hero in the American revolution |
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| Francis Holman, Blackwall Yard from the Thames, 1784; private ship-building yard |
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| Nicholas Pocock, Plymouth Dockyard, 1798; ship-building on a mammoth scale (for then); even larger was the yard at Portsmouth |
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| John Clevely the Elder, The Royal George at Deptford Showing the Launch of the Cambridge in 1755, 1757; I guess I am not the only person fascinated by the ship-building |
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| Not as Hollywood has portrayed it... |
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| Oops! I uncharacteristically forgot to note the titles and painters for these two battle scenes |
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Naval battles in these times were as much about guns, knives, hand-to-hand stuff as cannons; Nelson said the best a captain could do was to get his ship alongside his foe; Errol Flynn said "It's cutlasses now, lads!" |
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| Nevertheless, the things fired from cannons were pretty nasty... |
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| He really liked his medals and "did not fear to show them to the enemy," which made him an easy target for the French sharpshooters at Trafalgar; another Abbot portrait of Nelson |
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| Portrait of Nelson after the battle of the Nile, attributed to Guy Head, c. 1800 |
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| Nelson's combination fork and knife |
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| Elizabeth's chief privateers/swashbucklers: Cavendish, Drake, and Hawkins; pirates to their victims, heroes back home; not pictured: Captain Geoffrey Thorpe... |
