I have been to... HMS Warrior

Time for another update..

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Time to take advantage of my yearly dockyard ticket, this time with a visit to HMS Warrior which I don't think I've been on in over 20 years..  I seem to remember the last time might have been either a wedding reception or a charity dinner (either of which you can host on the ship) given by the hospital that the current Mrs Steve the Wargamer worked at..  anyway, more than long enough since I've been on board this awe inspiring piece of naval architecture.. she is utterly magnificent (piccie following) and dominates the entrance to Portsmouth Harbour - you can't help but notice her! 

There's a trend here (as you'd expect), and like Mary Rose and Alliance, her inclusion in the museum is because she marks a crossover, in this case between the wooden warships of Nelson's day, and the first iron framed, and ironclad, warships of latter times..

Anyway - brief history/summary, Warrior is a 40-gun, steam-powered, armoured frigate built between 1859 & 1861. What I didn't appreciate before this visit was that Warrior was a class of warship and she also had a sister ship HMS Black Prince. They were the first armour-plated, iron-hulled, warships ever built, and were a response to France's launching in 1859 of the "Gloire" (and two sister ships). Gloire was the first ever ocean-going ironclad warship, but wooden-hulled...  the Royal Navy clearly couldn't leave that unchallenged , and besides, didn't have anything that could match in terms of firepower and more importantly protection* so Warrior and Black Prince were ordered in a hurry... 😀

*(it really did cause almost a national emergency - sparked a massive invasion scare, and a lot of the fortification building that subsequently happened was also because of it)

Unless I'm mistaken this would have been one of the four Rifled breechloading 40-pdr's - I was much taken with the attached caisson - clearly it could be moved and used wherever required...

Armament was:

• 26 × Smoothbore muzzle-loading 68-pdr (206 mm) guns (and consider that only 50 years before, the largest gun on HMS Victory would have been 32pdr)
• 10 × Rifled breechloading 110-pdr (178 mm) guns
• 4 × Rifled breechloading 40-pdr (121 mm) guns

Despite being the most powerful ship afloat at the time - she never fired in anger - she was the atom bomb of her day, a deterrent..

Bow chaser - one of the Rifled breechloading 110-pdr's I think

I can confirm it is real (not a fibreglass or wooden copy), and a feel inside the barrel showed it was rifled.. 😏

I was massively taken with the bronze tracks on the deck - they would have been used to protect the deck during recoil, but more to assist with the laying of the gun - moving it from side to side for aiming

Stern chaser - details as per the bow chaser

She would have had a crew of just over 700 men (including officers) and I confirm that there were multiples of these (following) scattered around the ship

1858 Enfield rifles, with bayonets - I believe the rifles are replicas (there are a lot of them so I'm not surprised!) but that the bayonets may be original

Also side arms.. 

1851 Navy pattern Colt revolvers - these are replicas, but the originals would have been made by the Samuel Colt Armoury in London. The stand is a ready use "crocus" weapon rack - there were two or three of these scattered round the ship - there was also a pistol next to every gun on the gun deck for use in the event of boarding.. 

...and then the piece de resistance..  my favourite part of the ship, the main gun deck.. it's difficult to show how light, open, and airy this space is compared to Victory - good standing head room, plenty of space between each gun, but a sailor on Victory would have felt quite at home on Warrior I think - the guns may be bigger, but the loading process is similar, the 'messing' arrangements are the same - tables between the guns for 18 sailors (the mess) who basically lived as a small sub unit of the crew in terms of rations, drink, socialising, etc. Men each mess would take it in turns to be mess cook- this job entailed collecting the food for your mess for each meal, taking it to the galley to be cooked, bringing it to the mess table and dolling it out fairly. They also slept between the guns in hammocks - 18" of shoulder room only..

Thirteen 68pdrs leading off into the distance..  same on the other side..

...with a 110 pdr rifled breech-loader at each end for a bit of extra oomph.. 😏

Better view of the mess living space..  note also that the Royal Navy muzzle loaders are now largely recoil-less and the carriages don't have wheels - basically they have a massive iron pin at the front which attaches the gun directly to the ship - any recoil is thus absorbed by the ship..

So how fast was she? In addition to the sails she carried on the main masts, she also had a two-cylinder trunk steam engine, made by John Penn and Sons, using steam provided by 10 rectangular boilers to drive a single propeller. During sea trials in 1868 she got up to just over 14kn's - she carried enough fuel (coal) to steam just over 2000 nm at 11 kn. She could do 13 kn's just under sail alone - and the propeller could be raised to reduce drag while sailing (though it took 600 men to do it as the thing was damn heavy!) To further reduce drag, her funnels were telescopic and could be lowered.

Under sail and steam together, the ship once reached 17.5 kn against the tide while running from Portsmouth to Plymouth

Two cylinder steam engine..

Last of all this was what made her the wonder of the age that she was..  the armoured "belt" on Warrior

4" of hammered wrought iron armour plate facing..

..with 18" (!) of teak backing..

Fantastic ship - but like the Hilsea Lines she had SUCH a short shelf life and all due to the sheer speed of technological advance at the time - so commissioned in 1861, she went on a public relations cruise around the UK in 1863 (to show the flag and also to train up the crew in an entirely new kind of ship) before joining the Channel Squadron as flagship. 

She began a refit in November 1864 and was recommissioned in 1867. 

In 1871 however, the Royal Navy commissioned its first mast less capital ship, HMS Devastation (from lessons learned during the American Civil War, and especially the turreted Monitor) and shortly after Warrior went in to second line/reserve (after just 10 years!). She was classified a hulk in 1900. After that she was the unglamorous maid of all sorts..

• The ship was used as a storage hulk from May 1901 to July 1902.
• In preparation for service as a depot ship for a flotilla of destroyers, the ship had her engines and boilers removed and part of her upper deck roofed over. 
• In March 1904, she was assigned to the Portsmouth-based Vernon, the Royal Navy's torpedo-training school and was renamed Vernon III in order to release her name for a new armoured cruiser HMS Warrior. New boilers and electric generators were installed so that she could supply steam and electricity to the neighbouring hulks that made up Vernon.
  
  

  

  ..as Vernon III..

  
  
• In October 1923, the school was transferred to a newly built shore installation, rendering Warrior and her companion hulks redundant; Warrior resumed her name (the battle cruiser had sunk) but the Royal Navy declared her redundant six months later.
• due to the number of ships being scrapped after WW1 there was no demand for scrap iron when the Navy decided to sell her off, so she remained in Portsmouth for another four years being modified into a mooring jetty in 1927. 
• Her new home was Pembroke Dock in Wales, where from 1929 she served as a floating oil jetty for the next 50 (!) years
• During World War II she served as a base ship for coastal minesweepers and renamed Oil Fuel Hulk C77 to release her name for use by a light aircraft carrier, HMS Warrior, then under construction.

  

  Oil Fuel Hulk C77..   😞

Unglamorous then, but the very utilitarian nature of the service she did after decommission is exactly what saved her..  she was also lucky, as Black Prince was scrapped in 1923.

Brilliant day out - very much recommended for a visit..

Further references and reading:

• HMS Warrior (1860) - Wikipedia
• HMS Warrior | National Historic Ships

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 Laters, as the young people are want to say...

"Firing into the Brown" #46 - mystery buildings and stuff..

"So Carnehan weeds out the pick of his men, and sets the two of the Army to show them drill and at the end of two weeks the men can manoeuvre about as well as Volunteers. So he marches with the Chief to a great big plain on the top of a mountain, and the Chiefs men rushes into a village and takes it; we three Martinis firing into the brown of the enemy".

Kipling "The Man Who Would Be King"

Time for another update..

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(ex) Factories of renown...  virtual prize to the first person who correctly identifies it - if ever a building deserved a blue plaque this one does... building centre right with the two open windows..

I remember going there a few times when I was a much younger Steve the Wargamer..

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 Laters, as the young people are want to say...

"Firing into the Brown" #45 - Burma, tables and stuff..

"So Carnehan weeds out the pick of his men, and sets the two of the Army to show them drill and at the end of two weeks the men can manoeuvre about as well as Volunteers. So he marches with the Chief to a great big plain on the top of a mountain, and the Chiefs men rushes into a village and takes it; we three Martinis firing into the brown of the enemy".

Kipling "The Man Who Would Be King"

Time for another update..  just a short one this week (for which I apologise), but there is just so much going on in the other hobby at the moment that there's little time for wargaming'y activity..

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Holland is one of my favourite military historians, one because he has a very easy reading style, but second, and most, because his histories focus on the individual - like Richard Holmes (RIP) he is one of those historians who tells the story from the bottom up, rather than the grand sweeping view downwards.. in my view (and theirs), it is the man and woman in the field who make the strategies, and the tactics work, and I am endlessly fascinated by their memories and recollections of what it was actually like to be there at the time..  

Quite possibly the best of his books, was the one I read on the siege of Malta late last year - a real 10 plus'er - so I was looking forward to reading this one immensely, as not only is it by Holland, but I'll be quite honest and say I am not particularly au fait with the Far Eastern theatre of operation in WW2 so was looking to learn a little more.

Holland argues that the Battle of the Admin Box in Burma in '44 was quite possibly the turning point of the war in Far East as far as the British/Indian troops were concerned - up until that point in time, much as Rommel had been the bogey man in the desert, the Japanese had been the bogey man for the soldiers of the Allies in the Far East. They were seen as fierce, unbeatable, and closely allied with the jungle, and between the two of them Allied soldiers at the time were at a considerable morale deficit - they were seen as unbeatable.

When Mountbatten was put in charge of the theatre however (and that in itself was an interesting decision) he proved to be a dynamic leader (also interesting as it's definitely at odds with the picture of Mountbatten you get in the book on Operation Jubilee by Patrick Bishop for example) and one of his first (have to say, inspired) decisions was to put Slim in charge of the 14th 'Forgotten' Army, who together with a talented and inspired staff started training the army to the point where they felt that they might have a chance - one of the hero's for me was Messervy, who after an ignominious career in the Western Desert had been sacked and sent to the Far East (which seemed to be the dumping ground for all the failures in West and Middle East!) but where he argued strenuously that heavy and medium tanks could be used in the jungle - in my mind an absolute game changer and one of the main reasons that the British won the battle..

So what of the Battle of the Admin Box [clicky]?

• at the start of '44, and after the winter of training mentioned, Slim launched his offensive into the Arakan (the costal province of Burma), 
• at the same time the Japanese launched their offensive aimed at sucking in Allied resources so as to make a second Japanese offensive on the central front easier
• the Japanese infiltrated the British and Indian front lines and besieged what was known as the Admin Box - an administration centre for the coordination of operations for the 14th Army
• as a result of the intensive training, although the box comprised mostly HQ staff, admin, radio operators, engineers, hospital and medical staff - they were all now trained in weapons and tactics, but before they were sealed off, were reinforced by a couple of squadron of tanks (Lee's - which were obsolescent everywhere except the Far East!), and also men of the West Yorkshire Regiment, Gurkha's, and also artillery
• despite continued attacks the siege was unsuccessful and the British/Indian/Gurkha's held out for a little over two weeks, before the Japanese broke off and retreated
• other main reasons they won apart from those tanks? 
• that training - they troops on the ground knew what to do and had been trained in small unit tactics and weapons - their morale was good at the beginning, and only grew as they saw the successes of beating off attacks
• air superiority through a combination of Spitfire Mk VIII's and the introduction of Battle of Britain style air coordination
• air supply - the box was getting two or three air drops a day courtesy RAF Dakota's
• the Japanese tactics of living off the land - which failed when their primary source of supply (the army) refused to give it up - basically the Japanese army starved to death

Excellent book then, and an inspiring read, but only an eight out of ten for me - primarily because of a lack of other first had accounts to bolster the narrative - basically nothing major from any of the Indian, Gurkha or Japanese combatants, as Holland himself admits, they just don't exist..

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Wondered if a step by step on how to use a table generator I found online might be of interest???  I use tables all the time in my blog posts for orbats and the like but I appreciate there'll be those this doesn't apply to.. so, if generating tables in your blog posts is of no interest, I'll return you to your normal programming..  "next blog, please" 😏

If you are interested though...

1/. Got to website (HTML Tables generator – TablesGenerator.com) and select the HTMLTables option

2/. Set the size of your table.. it doesn't matter if you want to add or delete extra rows or columns later.. default seems to be 4 (rows) by 5 (columns) select the 'table' drop down and then 'set size' to open a little box on which you can select with your mouse to set size of table (just move the mouse over the area you want and click).. it tells you the size at the bottom as a check..  (NB. If at a later point you want to add or delete rows or columns select the relevant drop down for column or row)

3/. Not essential but this is a 'tarting up' point - either do it now or after you've entered your content...  this is how you space the lines and columns - narrow or wide..  just slide the bar with your mouse..

4/. Time to put your data/content in - just click on the cell and start typing - you can either do it here, or copy the blank table into the Blogger post and do it there.. this example assumes you're doing it in the web page..

5/. Set the alignment, font, font characters (bold underlined etc)..  for Blogger I wouldn't bother with these, as you can do the latter in Blogger..  but you can do it here if you want..

6/. Click the "Do Not Generate CSS" check box - CSS is an HTML language but the code is more complex, and isn't necessary in Blogger, as Blogger has it's own CSS code running in the background..  then click the "Generate" button

7/. Click the copy to clipboard option

8/. Go to blogger, open a new post, select "HTML" option at top left (under the pencil icon), and paste the code - the only change I made was to add "Border=1" to the "Table" command right at the beginning so that I could see the lines between the cells...

Click "Compose" top left (under the < > icon)and voila, un table ...  job done....

tutorial	fgfgf			fgfgf
fgffgf	fgffg	fgffg	fgffg	fgfgfg
fffgg	fgfgfg	fgfgffg	fgfffgf	fgffgfgg
fgffg	fgf	fgfg	fgfg	fgfgf

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Laters, as the young people are want to say...

I have been to... Bruges, Tyne Cot and Ypres

Just back from a whistle-stop tour of Belgium - well, a bit of it anyway - with the current Mrs Steve the wargamer, and most enjoyable it was as well..  I was very impressed with Belgium, and it's people, I don't doubt there are bad eggs like there are in most countries, but all the Belgians we met were delightful..  friendly, and more than willing to provide information when requested...  they seem to me anyway to be quite a contented bunch, no doubt due to the national delight in good chocolate (the Belgians invented the filled chocolate by the way), waffles, fries served with mayonnaise, and all washed down with strong beer.. 😀

Bruges (or Brugge as it is known locally), where we were were based for our 4 days/3 nights, is simply lovely - very much recommended..

For one of the days however, we were able to make a days tour to Ypres (or Ieper as it is known locally), which was the scene of some of the worst fighting in WW1 for the British and Commonwealth armies - there were three main battles, 1st, 2nd and 3rd Ypres - but 3rd Ypres (1917) is better known as Passchendaele...  on the way to Ypres we had the opportunity to stop off at Tyne Cot..

There's lots of information on the Wiki page [clicky] but in essence, Tyne Cot is the largest cemetery for Commonwealth forces in the world, and for any war. The name allegedly comes from the Northumberland Fusiliers seeing a resemblance between the German concrete pill boxes and a typical Tyneside workers cottage (known as a Tyne cot). What I found fascinating was that the site of the cemetery is built in and around those pillboxes. it was a fortified position captured by the Australians and New Zealanders during the Battle of Passchendaele.

Note the bunker/pillbox remains under the trees centre right - note also the height of the cemetery compared to surrounding country side..  the country is so flat that every slight rise became a strong point as indeed this was..

Like a lot of the Commonwealth War Grave Commission cemetery's, the site is immaculate, but also features a central plinth with a Cross of Sacrifice [clicky] but which for this site was built on top of one of those German pill boxes - you can still see the concrete in the aperture following..

Inscription reads: "THIS WAS THE TYNE COT BLOCKHOUSE CAPTURED BY THE 3RD AUSTRALIAN DIVISION - 4 October 1917"

Very, very sobering...  almost 12,000 graves (including four German one's), three quarters of which have no name. Around the edges of the cemetery though, are the inscribed wall plaques to those who simply went missing - another almost 35,000 British and New Zealand members of the armed forces...  inscribed there because the Menin Gate, which is the main monument to commemorate the missing,  was not big enough to inscribe all the names on, there were so many missing...  "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori", indeed.. 'Ave'.. 😔

I think most of us were fairly happy to move on to Ypres where the the first of two museums visited that days was the 'In Flanders Fields Museum' located in the Cloth Hall on the market square in the city centre...   first comment - most of what you see as you enter Ypres was (re)built after WW1, as Ypres was surrounded on three sides by the Germans during WWI (the well known 'salient') who unleashed all they had on the city - the Cloth Hall where the museum is located was a casualty itself..  it may ne apocryphal, but it is said a man on horseback could see right across Ypres by the end of the war it had been levelled so much..

Anyway - the Museum is excellent - it focusses primarily on the war in the local area, and on the day we went was absolutely stuffed with young Belgian kids clearly doing course work and projects - really good to see...  the displays don't glorify the war, but seek to set the events in terms of the mores and feelings of the day, so we have the following examples of children's toys of the day...

...and I was particularly taken with this magnificent child's sized Cuirassier outfit.. 

...and the spud wearing it..

Safe to say that certainly on the German and French sides, memories of the Franco-Prussian War were still strong.. the Western European countries, fuelled by the resources of their overseas territories, were stronger than they had ever been, and significant amounts were spent on armaments..  the war was almost inevitable...

The Museum is huge is so the following are just a selection, but the following uniform "walls" particularly took my interest as a wargamer, and uniform nerd.. pictures are captioned..

Despite the kilt, this is actually Canadian kit - Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) of Canada - note the rifle grenade..

German..

French - note the grenade emblem on the front of the Adrian steel helmet..  the Belgians used the same helmet but there's has a lions head on the front

Very much recommended - if you go I also recommend you pay the extra couple of euro's for a trip up the belfry for a view of the surrounding countryside and geography.. 

Onwards and upwards though, and on our way back to Bruges we stopped off at the second museum of the day, the "Museum Passchendaele 1917", the theme of which is the third Battle of Ypres, also known as Passchendaele.

Situated in a chateau grounds of Zonnebeke, which itself lay in the middle of the former battlefield this is a slightly airier and airier museum than the previous one - the lighting in this one was particularly good...  this one was also stuffed with students, but we loitered at the back until they had all gone through and basically had the place to ourselves..

Highlight for me was the 'Passchendaele experience' a new display they only opened this year..  a big circular table showing the map of the area and the battle day by day, and all around the circular walls of the room a view of how the landscape changed..  amazing... but you can never take your eye off the counter at the bottom of the table showing the numbers of dead increasing by the day for the metres gained.. 😕

They also have a recreated bunker, and in the grounds recreated German and British style trench's - these in particular were very effective, the bunker is interesting but way too clean and smell free to give a real idea of what it must have been like to live week after week underground (and again this may be apocryphal, but they reckon that in WWI more people were living underground in bunkers in Belgium, than live above ground now!)..

Again - just a few pictures of things that took my eye.. captioned..

"C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre" ..  French cavalry 1914..  how soon it changed.. 

A variety of uniforms, and I was particularly taken with the Uhlan, but especially the one on the right..  large numbers of French Colonial troops fought in this area and they suffered extraordinarily through that first winter of 1914 in those uniforms..

French infantry 1914..  so much optimism..   😕

Quick firing 6 pounder from the side sponson of one of the British WWI tanks (male variant)

Found this really useful to understand the topography of the battle(s)

 1916, German M13 15cm Krupp howitzer and limber

Both very much recommended, if you really can only get the time to do one though, go to the Passchendaele Museum as Tyne Cot is also very close.. it's good to be reminded that although our little metal men live on to fight again, in the battles they simulate a lot of young men (and women) didn't.. suffice to say, I very much needed a beer after all that - I slept well as well that night, though... 😀

Further reading:

• In Flanders Fields Museum:  Home | In Flanders Fields Museum
• Ypres in WW1 : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ypres#First_World_War
• Passchendaele Museum: Home (English) - Passchendaele museum

Laters, as the young people are want to say...

"Firing into the Brown" #44 - Casemates, scrotes, dinghies and stuff..

"So Carnehan weeds out the pick of his men, and sets the two of the Army to show them drill and at the end of two weeks the men can manoeuvre about as well as Volunteers. So he marches with the Chief to a great big plain on the top of a mountain, and the Chiefs men rushes into a village and takes it; we three Martinis firing into the brown of the enemy".

Kipling "The Man Who Would Be King"

44..  droopy drawers... enough bingo calls,  time for another update..  😏

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The "Hilsea Lines project" is coming to a close with a visit I made this week, to both the far east and far west bastions...   I've numbered where I went on the following which you may wish to embigen..

First stop (1.) was a closer look at the dam I mentioned in one of my previous posts - the creek is tidal so this dam (and here was one at the other end as well) was to allow them to trap sufficient water in the creek to continue to be able to use gun boats as part of the defence plan.. 

...what I wondered was whether any signs still existed of what I'd guessed must have been a fairly significant structure... and the answer was no - I walked the length of it but nothing to see other than a normal earthen bank - the only thing I did wonder about was the following line of wooden stakes  remains of a breakwater perhaps?

That itch scratched it was time to go and check the east bastion (2/. on the map) - following the line of the creek, with the moat between me and it, I circled back so as to get an idea of the sheer size of this thing.. the following gives an idea - they would have been 30 feet high when built...  the gun openings, and other brickwork are all covered in earth now, but they're still there underneath that covering..

...then turning the end of the lines (they would originally have gone a further, but a number of housing and other developments (including an airfield and an aircraft factory) over the years have grubbed out the end of it) and you get to see the entrance to the "casemate" which the local degenerates bless'ums have kicked the door in on one entrance allowing a quick look inside.. 

Seen those kind of vents before.. at the Explosion! Museum in the gunpowder magazine, designed to allow a free flow of air so as to maintain a dry atmosphere..

...and this is what I found inside... from the door looking in...  note the vaulted ceiling, note also the shelf support at the end...  still there after all these years...

..a doorway to the left lead to another room..  

...and another doorway lead to a short passageway.. 

..to a much bigger room.. complete with seating..  😏

..closer view of the shelf supports and above them a hook - for a lantern perhaps??

...thinking on it I don't think that could properly be described as a casemate - it's more likely that the rooms may have been used as kitchen/washroom? The plans show that there are a row of barracks rooms (each holding 5 men) and that the cooking and washing facilities would have been at one end or the other - it's possible that this is what these are? My further understanding is that they should be connected to to the gun gallery above - and I saw no connections/passages - these were self contained rooms..  more investigation required...

Onwards and upwards though, and this is Bastion #6, currently in use as  WW1 Remembrance Centre..

I love the fact that a huge number of original fittings are still there - a WD stamped drainpipe - must be getting on for 150 years old unless some bugger has swapped it for a plastic copy..   😁

Expense magazine (I think) entrance on the other side of the yard ..

I would like to know what that is on top of the bank though.. 

A cycle to the west then allowed me to check out the west bastion - 4. on the map - this has an actual path/walk across the top, but most of the actual structure is owned by the local Grammar school so is closed off to the public - but they are at least using the spaces for storage!

So what's left?

1. I want to explore the east Bastion a little more - perhaps visit the Remembrance Centre as well both for the WW1 connection, and also for the view of a more preserved internal of a casemate
2. I also want to explore the west bastion a little more - I'm lead to believe there's an exposed gun opening that I didn't see on my visit
3. In 1875 the Lines were modified to accept the new (then) Moncrief style gun emplacements - they are still extant so I need to go and find them..  

..next time I'll go on foot as there may be a bit of scrambling about involved..

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... only a short one this week as this has been taking a lot of my attention - summer is coming, and boats are stirring and indeed being painted, epoxied, and titivated..  and Heaven only knows, this one (following) needs/needed it.. 😂  This is my new (to me) tender - "Fledgling Too" - used to get to the slightly bigger one - "Sparrow" - I sail on...  

 Laters, as the young people are want to say...