Queensferry Crossing, HMS Queen Elizabeth and all things Royal Navy

A slightly edited pick of HMS Queen Elizabeth

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I know I've taken this thread off topic but I keep seeing some great pictures from the dockyards in Pompey and feel the need to share. This is the stokers training ship at HMS Nelson in 1908. HMS Nelson is now a land base on Portsea Island which, if you have ever served in the RN, you are very likely to have spent time at. Fascinating to see the history behind the name.

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This is the original ship launched in 1876 and scrapped in 1910

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Unless someone moved it HMS Nelson is Pompey barracks based in the southern end of the dockyard on the IOW ferry side of HMS Victory formerly known as Victory Barracks. Stokes or whatever name they use now are trained at HMS Sultan in Gosport.
Since the demise of the Tiffs the RN hasn't trained any specialists to maintain ships equipment and it has been farmed out to private companies, the last of the genuine Tiffs working for the contractors are now reaching retirement age so the last of the highly skilled technicians will be gone , ships and submarines only get the basics fixed at sea now
 
FB, I don't know if you ever heard of it and It's long gone now but opposite HMS Nelson main gate on Queen Street, there was a shop called Wright and Logan. They had the copyright to an archive of a century or more of RN ships pictures. There were racks and racks of them in the shop. All mostly postcard size and cost about a few pounds each. They had everything from the common to the extremely obscure.

I often wondered when it closed, what happened to all of those pictures?
 
Not somewhere I've heard of but it sounds fascinating. Like many cities it has lost some of its more weird, wonderful and hidden gems. There was a metal workshop down on The Hard, which was like stepping back in time. In Somerstown there was a motorbike shop where you could get any part as long as your bike was 20 years old (and that was in 1980). The number of tailors near the Docks was incredible, especially good if you wanted some bell bottoms ;) I used to buy clothes from an Army surplus shop at the end of Charlotte street (where the market was on a Friday and Saturday). Unfortunately the joke shop, U Need Us, in Commercial Road has finally closed.

One shop which seems to survive no matter what is Chantelle Originals. If you have a daughter and would like to dress her up like the twins in The Shining, Chantelle's is the place to go - Chantelle Originals

Cities grow and evolve, but you can't help looking back at what was and thinking it was better. It probably wasn't though.

Edit - The RN Museum acquired the Wright and Logan collection - The Wright and Logan Collection
 
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FB said:
Back to the topic, HMS Queen Elizabeth has just left on her first active mission
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Since you've posted a number of really interesting pictures. Especially the Nelson one which I didn't know about, a simple slight of hand with the thread title now means it's all on topic and I can look forward to any other RN pics of Pompey you may have.

;)
 
Just for amusement as the question has been asked in various publications but not sure on here, whether or not the QE could dock at the Clyde Submarine Base, theoretically she can, Rhu Narrows are 240m wide and a minimum depth of 13.4m, specifically dredged for the Trident submarine, the QE beam maximum at the waterline is 39m and a draught of 11m so providing she doesn't get too sideways and is slow enough not to displace water in the narrows such to increase her draught it can be done. The big problem is that the QE has considerable windage on the beam and the prevailing winds are at right angles to the narrows so she would need probably to do at least 10 knots and the tugs would be restricted in positioning themselves to control any windage vere. Expensive if it goes wrong and blocks the exit and entry for all but two of the UK's submarine's home base
 
Why would an aircraft carrier want to dock at a submarine base ? Unless the captain was pissed ? I can see that an aircraft carrier might want to blow the submarine base up maybe. But not while docked in it .
 
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Titch said:
Why would an aircraft carrier want to dock at a submarine base ?
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I don't know about the wardroom but the Senior Rates mess at Faslane was one of my favourites. It was always really welcoming to visiting ships and half an hour before last orders a tray of warm meat and potato pies usually appeared on the bar.

We spent a few months surveying the region to update the charts and we also did a major sonar survey of the wreck of HMS Dasher, an escort carrier that sank after an internal explosion in 1943. The cause of which remains unknown.

The story made the news:

BBC NEWS | UK | Scotland | Glasgow and West | Navy uncover Clyde's deep secrets

news.bbc.co.uk news.bbc.co.uk
 
There are many exercises conducted off the west coast for NATO, Fas Lane is the base for all the foreign ships, aircraft carriers tend to anchor off Greenock or proceed to the NATO jetty at Glen Mallon newly extended to take the new carriers, so also would be able to receive the nuclear US carriers. Loch Long is deep enough and wide enough to take the largest vessels afloat, the BP jetty just south of the NATO jetty has taken fully loaded 450,000 ton tankers and been revolved 360 deg in the loch so as to arrive and depart bow first.
 
Probably heard it was happy hour in The Spice Island. LOL

If I recall correctly, this was Vanguard on her way to the breakers yard at the end of her service life.

Obviously, she was reluctant to go.
 

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