Spooky and not so spooky events

This past couple of weeks has seen a step change in the activity at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum. We have seen the start of the cofferdam, I met one of the earlier Staff Operations Officers of my first ship, HMS GALATEA, the new, albeit temporary, Director has been appointed and the half term has had the Spooky Tours taking place on the submarine.

The refit of HMS ALLIANCE will start next year but requires the building of a cofferdam around the boat. This will have a main purpose of allowing visitors to view the submarine from all angles but will also provide a platform for a lot of the refurbishment work to take place. The piling for this is being put in place and is impressive in it's simplicity and ease of installation. Along with this progress there has been the appointment of the new Director and at a recent meeting with local sponsors, supporters and interested parties the way ahead was highlighted.

There has been a lot of changes on the site as the worksite is cleared for the refurbishment. Sadly this has meant that the car park is now looking like Steptoe's yard, and is not helped by there being 3 yachts in the car-park. The museum had been holding elements of a Kaiten for some time but these have now been transferred to Explosion! who will restore it and recreate the missing sections. This blogger hopes that the submarine museum won't be completely denuded of its other exhibits once the site has been developed. He feels that it already looks Spartan and dare I say, tatty in places? In fairness, Explosion! does have a much greater storage area and already has many submarine related artefacts.


This half term, HMS ALLIANCE has been the site for some ghoulish goings-on, some submarine scariness, as the we've been running Spooky tours through the boat. The kids have loved it, as well as a few adults. But also during this half term I had the opportunity to meet a gentleman who was an officer HMS GALATEA in the mid 60s. He was showing his grandson around the boat and in conversation, our tenuous but common link became evident.