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.

The Diving Museum

The Diving Museum

Further to my previous blog about how how frustrating Gosport can be because of all it's hidden gems, I want to mention The Diving Museum.

This small and highly specialised museum is hidden in away in No 2 Battery at the eastern end of Stokes Bay. The Battery was part of the ring of defences around Portsmouth Harbour, which included the Palmerston Follies. The museum was opened earlier this year by The Historical Diving Society and it's manned by volunteers from that society.

We paid our 2 quid entry fee  and were pounced upon by one of the volunteers, an ex Royal Navy diver, who offered to show us around and explain the exhibits. And this he did with obvious relish and certainly a deep knowledge of his subject. The museum has exhibits from the early days of commercial diving in the 19th century right up to modern sports diving (using equipment supplied by BSAC) and saturation diving. There's a good balance between civillian and military diving and between commercial and sports diving and no shortage of exhibits with thre being lots of examples in each category.

What became clear right at the beginning of the tour, was that Gosport was the birthplace of modern commercial diving:

It is not yet popularly known, but Gosport is the home of the global diving industry. The co-inventor of the diving helmet, John Deane, lived in Gosport from 1835 to 1845 during which time he discovered the Mary Rose. The first diving helmet ever sold by the inventors was to a Gosport mariner, Henry Abbinett. Gosport represents a natural home for the country's premier historical diving museum.
(from www.divingmuseum.co.uk)

Apart from my sports diving interest, I was really pleased to make a connection with one of the other exhibits. When I was a baby sailor on HMS GALATEA in 1974, I was sent off to Fort Bovisand, near Plymouth to train as a Swimmer of the Watch. We had to don a 3 piece diving suit made up of a top and bottom, the two open ends of which are rolled together before being covered with a cummerbund. And I was chuffed to see that same suit being exhibited!

So this is Gosport's 4th museum. It already has the Submarine Museum, Explosion!, and the local natural history museum  The town also has it's 17th century village, and the Institute of Naval Medicine holds many artefacts and historical papers from the history of the Royal Naval Medical Branch.