Back to Britain, Part 8
By
Boat to Greenwich Observatory, Maritime Museum
June
10-25, 2003 (Updated Dec. 4, 2003)
By
Lewis Nolan
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Tuesday, June 17, 2003 – To Greenwich
The great weather we’ve
been enjoying since our arrival in London a week ago went on holiday today. It
was cloudy in the morning and by late afternoon heavy rain was falling in
sheets. However, the bad weather didn’t slow us down much since we had planned
to spend much of the day inside at the British Maritime Museum anyway.
After my usual breakfast
of a ham sandwich and Diet Coke in our flat at the Dolphin Square, I repaired
to Zest, the apartment hotel’s excellent fitness club. I spent a half-hour on a
stationery bike while watching the BBC news and then did a little Yogic
stretching. Betty stayed back to read.
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| Betty by Cutty Sark |
| Click Colored Type to Enlarge Photo |
After a light lunch at the
hotel deli, we took the tube to Westminster. Just a few yards downstream from
the Westminster Bridge – which dates to 1750 - is a fleet of modern excursion
boats. We paid £8 each for a round-trip ride down the Thames to the London
suburb of Greenwich. The excursion is well worth the cost. The boats sell
snacks and drinks, offer both indoor and outdoor seating and run on the half
hour. The captain provided an informative and entertaining narration during the
one-hour ride.
If one is to fully
appreciate London, it is essential to see the city from the river. Many of the
most interesting buildings and other sights were built on or near the Thames
over the centuries. Among them are the Houses of Parliament, the County Hall,
Millennium Wheel, Old Scotland Yard, Cleopatra’s Needle (an obelisk first
erected in Egypt in 1500 B.C. by Pharaoh Thotmes III and centuries later
presented to the British people in honor of Lord Nelson’s victory over the
French fleet at the Battle of the Nile in 1798), Savoy Hotel, Royal National
Theatre, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Tate Modern Gallery, Shakespeare’s Globe, Anchor
Tavern, Fishmongers’ Hall, Old Billingsgate Market, London Bridge City, Lloyd’s
of London, HMS Belfast, Tower of London, Dickens’ Inn and the Execution Dock at
Wapping.
We learned during the boat
captain’s narration that the infamous Captain Kidd and other pirates and
smugglers were put to death by drowning at Wapping. They chained to the muddy
riverbank at low tide. Supposedly they were set free if they survived three, successive,
21-foot tidal flows. But no example of such an act of divine mercy was given
during the commentary.
We passed miles of
high-rise, luxury condos in warehouses that were once abandoned and thought to
be all but worthless 20 years ago. A one-bedroom unit with a river view now
sells for £500,000. Opposite the Tower of London is a shiny development of
high-rise, glass towers that are stacked around several blocks to form a city
within a city. The buildings have expensive, mixed purpose units that include
offices, retail and residential. We were told the development is worth several
hundred million dollars and is owned by Kuwait’s Royal Family.
That means that the
immensely wealthy Arabs are reaping yet more economic benefits of the oil we
Westerners discovered, pumped out of the ground, refined, delivered, purchased
- and defended. We also cruised past the Royal Barge, a surprising small cabin
cruiser owned by the Queen that is rarely used. The boat is tied up to a
floating dock anchored near the middle of the river, probably for security
reasons.
The ancient town of
Greenwich has been a gateway to London for over 1,000 years. The Romans passed
through on their way to London. The invading Danes moored their longboats at
Greenwich when they raided Canterbury in 1012.
A manor house built in
Greenwich in the 15th Century was enlarged by several Tudor monarchs
and rebuilt by Henry VII. His son, the infamous Henry VIII, was born there.
James I gave the estate to his consort, Anne of Denmark, who started work on a
new building in 1616 that came to be called the Queen’s Palace. In 1694, Mary
II rededicated several unfinished buildings as the Royal Naval Hospital for
Seamen under the design of Christopher Wren (architect of St. Paul’s in
London). The Royal Naval College took over the buildings in 1873.
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| Lewis straddles two time zones |
| Click Colored Type to Enlarge Photo |
Rich in history, Greenwich
is a wonderful spot to visit, especially for sea buffs like me. As a boy, I was
thrilled by the Horatio Hornblower novels about British warships in the age of
sail. My favorite author is the late Patrick O’Brian, a popular British writer
whose work was made into the movie “Master and Commander.” I’ve read and
re-read all 17 of O’Brian’s saber-rattling, mainsail jibing stories in the
Aubrey-Maturin series about naval warfare during the Napoleonic Era. Those
books earned the New York Times Book Review sobriquet of being “the best
historical novels ever written.”
We had spent most of a day
at Greenwich during our trip to England 17 years ago and I had long been
looking forward to another visit. Once again and despite the wet weather, it
was a glorious outing from Central London. We again admired the Cutty Sark, the
great tea clipper built for the China trade in 1869 that is berthed in dry dock
a few yards from Greenwich’s front door riverport. The classic ship once held
the record for the fastest voyage on the tea route.
A drawing of the ship
adorns the label of Cutty Sark scotch whiskey. The popular brand was the drink of choice for the late
President Lyndon Johnson. LBJ’s biographers point out that he never traveled in
Air Force One without having several cases on hand; the President supposedly
drank two bottles a day.
Inside the hold of the
Cutty Sark ship is a collection of wooden masthead figures. The ship’s interior
still smells strongly like tea.
Near the Cutty Sark and
also in dry dock is another famous sailing craft, the Gipsy Moth IV. This is
the two-masted yacht that Sir Francis Chichester sailed single-handed around
the world in 1966-67. I had read his book about the record-setting voyage when
it first came out not long after his safe return to England. Thus armed, I got
great pleasure from being able to climb aboard and walk through the Gipsy Moth
IV during our 1986 visit. Alas, the boat is now showing signs of its age and
weathering and visitors are restricted to an adjacent viewing platform.
Chichester died some years ago.
We walked a few blocks
through the heart of Greenwich and trekked up a steep hill to the Royal
Observatory. There, we saw where time really begins. The Prime Meridian –
Longitude 0.0.0, as in zero – was fixed here in 1884. The Prime Meridian is the
basis for the worldwide-accepted method of fixing time by different zones.
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| Betty overlooks Maritime Museum complex |
| Click Colored Type to Enlarge Photo |
The Zero meridian is an
imaginary line that circles the globe and knifes through the hilltop
observatory at Greenwich. It is symbolically marked just outside the
observatory by a stainless steel line embedded in concrete. Everything to the
east of the line is the Eastern Hemisphere of the global time zone. Everything
to the west is in the Western Hemisphere of the global time zone. Times
everywhere in the world are staggered by their longitudinal relationship to
Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).
By straddling the line, a
visitor can be in two hemispheric zones at once. Lots do. Many have their
photos taken, as did I.
Atop the observatory is
the time ball, which has dropped precisely at 1 p.m. every day since 1833. It
was the first public time signal, put up to help mariners on the Thames set
their chronometers. We saw a similar signal in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1985 that
was accompanied by the firing of a canon. There was no canon fired this day
when the red ball dropped down a black tower at the Greenwich observatory. I
didn’t think to ask if one ever was.
The brick-and-wood
observatory isn’t much bigger than a Georgian Colonial-style home in Memphis.
It was designed by Christopher Wren, England’s greatest architect, and built in
1675 by King Charles II. The observatory provided living quarters and workspace
for the first Royal Astronomer, who greatly advanced ship navigation by
accurately mapping the stars.
The observatory has many
excellent exhibits related to marine navigation and timekeeping. Precise
reckoning of positions at sea was not possible until the invention and
development of truly accurate clocks that could withstanding the movement of a
ship at sea for months. An accurate clock made it possible for navigators to
use sighting instruments, mathematic tables and charts to precisely measure the
angle of the sun at 1 p.m. local time. They could then calculate their
longitudinal distance from the Prime Meridian. Today, navigation is done by
radio or satellite signals driven by atomic clocks and interpreted by
computers.
One prize in the
observatory’s collection is a longitude watch made in 1759 by John Harrison,
said to be “the most important timekeeper ever made.” Another is the 28-inch,
refractor of 1893, the largest telescope of its kind in Britain.
The gift shop was crowded
with visiting school children so we didn’t buy any souvenirs. It seems that the
British schools treat their children to many more outings that do their
American counterparts. Maybe it is because there is so much more history in
Britain. Or maybe the British kids are better behaved. Or maybe the priorities
are way different. Back home, the emphasis is on preparing students to pass
standardized achievement tests; Memphis public schools only budget one daytrip
per child per year, a disgrace.
It started raining just as
we left the observatory. We donned our knee-length, GoreTex rain slickers, but
still got out pants legs wet during the walk of a half mile or so to the
National Maritime Museum. We found the galleries to be vastly improved since
our last time here. I could have easily have spent an entire day touring the
artifacts, displays and memorabilia of Britain’s seafaring history.
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| Admiral Nelson |
| Click Colored Type to Enlarge Photo |
I particularly enjoyed the
new Nelson Gallery. It houses a remarkable collection that focuses on the life
and times of England’s most beloved admiral and greatest naval hero. Among the
displays is the uniform coat Nelson wore when he fell at Trafalgar 199 years
ago, with the fatal bullet hole clearly visible. I’ve read several biographies
of Lord Viscount Horatio Nelson, whom I consider to be one of the most
interesting and compelling world-shakers in history.
I was sickened to learn
that a privately owned collection of Nelson’s medals had been stolen in the
1870s. Worse, I learned that an intricate, multi-diamond hat decoration that
spun with a watch movement had been stolen from the museum in 1951. It also had
never been recovered. The priceless piece was awarded Nelson by the grateful
ruler of Turkey, whose throne was saved by one of the admiral’s brilliant naval
moves against the French.
I think that stealing a
reminder of the greatness one man can rise to is an abomination. Such theft is
a crime against all mankind. Nelson’s memory belongs to the ages, like that of
Julius Caesar, Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee and Winston Churchill. Stealing a
visual reminder of their greatness is like desecrating the Tomb of the Unknown
Soldier.
A museum guard offered
that the Nelson “chelengk” - as the diamond ornament was called – was likely
the slimy work of a skilled thief working on a specific commission. The guard
speculated that the piece was probably on an airplane out of London within a
few hours of its removal from the museum display case. It was then probably
delivered to a very rich collector with no morals or conscience. To this day,
the guard suggested, the piece likely stays in a vault somewhere (possibly in
Asia or the Middle East) only to be taken out a time or two a year for solo
viewing. It makes me angry to think how such national and world treasures
continue to be stolen and spirited away into private collections in order to
feed the egos of the selfish monsters who buy them.
We spent most of our time
at the Maritime Museum in the Nelson Gallery, which actually is a string of
rooms. But we did hurriedly walk through another grand exhibit, this one dealing with ocean liners. On display in
several galleries are reconstructed cabins of historic vessels and a great many
scale models.
We had a tasty lunch in
one of the several museum restaurants and I purchased a small, metal bust of
Admiral Nelson in the gift shop. The bust now stands amid my modest collection
of Patrick O’Brian and other seafaring books.
I was amused but saddened
to learn that the ignorance of the world around them among young adults knows
no national borders. I asked two, pleasant, young women who work as Maritime
Museum hostesses how far Greenwich is from the English Channel. Neither had a
clue whether the distance was 10, 100 or 500 miles. An older man who worked as
a museum host told me it was probably 40-to-45 miles as the crow flies but
closer to 50 miles by way of the Thames River.
As they did centuries ago,
large boats still come up the British Channel, pass by or possibly tie up at
Greenwich and ride the tides up the river to London. Long ago, the enormous
tidal flows allowed un-powered vessels transport the commerce of London by
sailing up and down the river. The boats used their sails to steer in the
proper channel. Nelson’s body was taken to London by such a ship and then
transferred to a custom-built barge for an elaborate, waterborne parade and
ceremony. Some old prints in the Maritime Museum show the Thames almost
bank-to-bank with sailing vessels at Greenwich.
We had the tide going our
way for the return trip to London via excursion boat. It was raining cats and
seadogs. There was no commentary on the way back, possibly because of the foul
weather and possibly because the captain had been tipped on the downriver stage
of the trip earlier in the day. We couldn’t see much because of the heavy rain.
I enjoyed a highball during the 35-minute return trip upriver to Central
London.
Back at the Westminster
Station, we encountered an annoying incident. Betty tried to pass through the
automated gates at the entrance to the tube’s train-boarding area. She inserted
her prepaid subway pass into the mechanism just as a confused, inconsiderate
woman ahead of her stopped in the gate at mid-stride. By this time the machine
had already processed Betty’s ticket even though she had been blocked from
passing through the gate. We had to get a security guard to reactivate the
ticket.
With the rain making
unattractive another foray outside, we decided to eat dinner at one of the
Dolphin Square’s restaurants rather than walk several blocks to a nearby pub. I
had an excellent shank of lamb and Betty had beef and vegetables. Afterward, I
reviewed our travel plans for the next day. We had to figure out the optimum
route to get out of London while
avoiding the £5 per day “use tax” required for driving in the Central District.
Once I saw just how complicated it would be to drive through London traffic and
north to Stratford-on-Avon, then south and west to Bath, we scrapped our visit
to the town made famous by the Bard. We decided to drive to Bath by the most
direct and fastest route across southern England.
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