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We spent the morning back amongst the ships and submarines of Portsmouth and didn't really come close to doing everything.
It's interesting to see how boat design improved over the centuries (apart from the loss of figureheads). The Mary Rose would have scared the bejesus out of enemies back in the time of Henry VIII, unless it tried to turn round with its gunports open when it was a bit windy, when it would jus sink. But what if Nelson had shown up on the Victory and decided to go on the French side for a laugh? And how would Nelson have coped against a submarine with torpedos. Not very well.
These huge advances over a few centuries are brought into sharp focus by the pair of modern warships (I am assuming they are aircraft carriers, but I know fuck all about it) that are parked (is that the right word for boats) in the harbour. If time travel ever becomes possible, then I am transporting one of these bastards back to the 1540s to take on Henry VIII's fleet. I'll teach that gout ridden bastard that he shouldn't chop off women's heads just because he's got bored with them (or for any reason). Imagine one of these things smashing through his shitty wooden ships. Oh firing your little cannonballs at us you Lilliputian pricks? We don't even have to attack you. We'll just run you over. And then put your skellingtons and crappy possessions in a museum and make millions out of them. Ha ha ha.
It's the kind of thing you can do sometimes when playing Civilization, but human history would be really spiced up with 21st Century tech going up against medieval rubbish. All we have to do is invent time travel, steal an aircraft carrier and get the sailors to mutiny and be on our side and then we could be kings of the 1550s, where even the richest person in the world doesn't have as luxurious a life as most of us now enjoy. But it'd be fun though. Plus you could marry Anne Boleyn and be nice to her. You couldn't be worse than her last boyfriend.
I'll give Anne of Cleves a miss though. I'm not sick.
Anyway, that's probably screwed up my application to get a job at the time travel laboratory, but keep checking your history books to see if I succeed.
I very much enjoyed visiting the HMS Alliance, though the former submariner who showed us round mentioned the Falklands War and asked who remembered that whilst looking at me. Terrifying both that that's so far in the past that people might not remember it and that he picked me out of the group as someone old enough to recall this ancient history.
If you go on the submarine then try to be at the back of your tour group because then you get as much time as you want to look at everything and play with the periscopes and marvel at the idea of 65 men sharing this tiny space for 16 weeks at a time, not changing their clothes or showering. My favourite thing on this terrifying vessel of destruction that would have made King Henry VIII shit his britches were the couple of tiny lounge areas, with floral pattern sofas and delicate teacups. Hard to imagine these hardened submariners chilling out in areas that looked like they'd been designed by your gran, before shooting off some torpedos.
We also had time to look round the submarine museum, an exhibition about Nelson and go out on some small fun boats which Ernie was able to pilot. I think this was his favourite bit.
I highly recommend this attraction (they haven't paid me to say this and I paid for everything myself). The only thing they could do to improve it is to build a fleet of medieval ships that you're allowed to attack and destroy with an aircraft carrier, though this might add a bit of money to the entrance ticket.
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