Being a quiet weekend in London, I decided to drag Char along to a unique museum I've always been keen to visit - HMS Belfast, permanently moored close to Tower Bridge.
The ship remains pretty much unchanged since it was decomissioned in 1968.
The forward guns are trained on a motorway service station on the M1, nearly 12 miles away, showing off the range of these guns which can fire over most of Greater London.
Directly underneath the guns in the bowels of the ship, shells are readied to go up the special lift to be loaded on a conveyor belt. The whole slick operation needed 20-30 men, and the men manning the turrets had to eat and even sleep in there the whole time they were at sea.
The ship showed off the living conditions the sailors were subjected to. A refit in the '50s provided proper bunkbed living accomodation (above), but the earlier sailors were forced to live in much more cramped conditions on hammocks slung over their eating tables.
Even the ship's cat!
London Bridge is also home to a very unusual sculpture with a clearly nautical theme:
2 comments:
Char is certainly getting educated ;).
thanks Dave.
jethro wants a hammock!
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