Cruising
4
Unst Boat
Haven
On the Shetland Islands, the Unst Boat
Haven must appeal to any serious boatie.
Inside a large, crowded shed there is an
impressive collection of historical and
restored Shetland open wooden boats,
typically double-ended, which had been
used for fishing. As ever in Shetland, there
is a Norwegian connection: the wood to
build the boats had to come from Norway,
only 165 miles away, because there wasn’t
any on Shetland (and there still isn’t
any). And after all, Shetland only moved
from being part of Norway to being part
of Scotland in the 15th century.
■ http://www.unstheritage.com/web/
unst-boat-haven
7
Hartlepool and
(^5) HMS Trincomalee
The Harwich
Society
On the surface, there seems little to
commend Harwich. However, as well
as the friendly staff at the Halfpenny
Pier pontoons, there is a rather good
heritage trail put together by the
clearly enthusiastic Harwich Society.
You follow the trail to the lifeboat
museum, old weather-boarded houses
dating back to the 15th century, the
17th century treadwheel crane (with
no brake, so there were a lot of accidents),
St Nicholas
Church and
the restored
Electric Palace
cinema, built
in the days of
silent movies.
The trail
ends up at
the old
lightship
moored to
the harbour
wall, where you can wander around
brooding on what these things
must have been like to live on in
a full-blown gale.
■ http://www.harwich-society.co.uk
6
Ramsgate
Maritime
Museum
Ramsgate’s brilliant, volunteer-run
Maritime Museum reopened a few
years ago. It majors on Dunkirk (not
surprisingly, as so many of the ‘little
boats’ sailed from here) and covers
many other aspects of local history. For
me, the most fascinating part was a film
made by an American journalist who,
because the USA was neutral at the
time, was able to embed himself in the
advancing German army. The contrast
between the laughing, relaxed Germans
and the beleaguered British troops
one associates with wartime footage is
astonishing. It was also good to see a
model of the original HM schooner Pickle
which brought the news of Trafalgar and
Nelson’s death to Falmouth, where my
own Pickle was built by Rustler Yachts.
■ http://www.ramsgatemaritimemuseum.org
Inside the Unst Boat Haven, with its impressive selection of open wooden boats
Geof Sheppard (own work) GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)
The Ramsgate Maritime Museum
The Electric Palace
The Harwich lifeboat museum
HMS Trincomalee – the oldest warship
still afloat in the world
Hartlepool has a convenient marina in
a vast dock, not in any sense a tourist
destination from the land or sea, but
it does boast one rather special sight –
her tall masts towering above the
puny modern spars of the yachts on
the pontoons.
The Trincomalee, still floating, is
a fighting ship built in Bombay and
launched in 1817. Too late for the
Napoleonic wars, she never fired a
gun in anger. Personally, I think
visiting her is preferable to visiting
the far better-known fighting ship in
Portsmouth, HMS Victory, or even
HMS Warrior.
You can wander around on the
Trincomalee wherever you like
(rather than along a pre-defined
route which you’d have to pay for
again if you wanted to repeat the
route, as on HMS Victory), and not
be overwhelmed by crowds. Moreover,
she is much more entertainingly
and informatively displayed, all
within the context of a reconstructed
historic dockyard.
■ http://www.hms-trincomalee.co.uk/about-us