A rather unique opportunity presents itself this weekend, and that is the chance to visit one of the more famous ships in the world – Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior. No, not the one the French sank, the other one.

The ship is having a two-day stop over in London before heading up to Edinburgh next week then over to Copenhagen for the Climate Change Conference.

A disclosure – I am not entirely a supporter of Greenpeace. I believe their aims are honourable, but I believe they are often a bit naive about the complexity of the issues and that there are better ways of dealing with problems. That said, they are very good at raising issues with the media, although the media tends to be a bit shy of them after it was burnt by the Brent Spar controversy.

Anyhow – big famous ship in London with free tours. I’m in!

I am not going to detail everything they said, as much of it was informative without being too detailed – this was very much a look, point, gawp, move along tour – which is actually quite ideal for these sorts of things.

A fair bit of time was spent explaining who Greenpeace is, and the history of the ship and the organisation’s involvement with the French secret service, which was to be expected. Then we were handed over to one of the chaps who look after the engines and the talk became a bit more technical about the running of a ship and dealing with maintenance issues and the like.

You don’t get to see the engines though – this is entirely an above deck visit.

Although the ship has sails, and will use them, as it is a converted fishing vessel, it is not actually that good as a sailing ship. However, on the trip from Spain to London, they managed 4 days of sailing out of a total trip of 8 days and saved 6 tons of fuel, so not that bad. When asked why more ships don’t dual-mode, the engineers was refreshingly frank about the problems faced and the skills need to manage a sailing ship.

While the environmental aspect is obvious, the economics are far less viable.

Almost to remind us of the problems, a more traditional tall sailing ship just happens to be moored alongside the same dockside this weekend. Quite a comparison.

I’ll leave the photos (over at Flickr) to tell the tale of the tour of the Rainbow Warrior.

The ship is based in docklands today and tomorrow (21st & 22nd Nov) and a quick chat with one of the ladies assured me that you can just turn up tomorrow and ask to join a tour group. You can formally book a place via their website, and that might be wise – although she doubted you would get the confirmation email.

Just turn up and – caveat emptor – if places are available, you’ll get a tour.

The ship is just round the corner from the new South Quay DLR station, and easy to spot.

For me the tour made quite an interesting contrast on so many levels with a visit to a very different ship earlier this year, when HMS Illustrious visited Greenwich for a few days.

If you are envious of the recent tour of HMS Illustrious I wrote about, you might be interested to learn that it has just been announced that, as part of a weekend of Navy events,  tours of HMS Daring will be available this coming September.

Alas, not in London – you’ll have travel down to Plymouth for this one.

There will also be the opportunity to tour a Royal Navy hunter-killer nuclear submarine as well as the Falklands veteran – Valiant class submarine Courageous.

More details at Navy Days 2009 – Meet Your Navy

On a sort of related topic – this year happens to mark the 50th anniversary of the first crossing of the English Channel by a hovercraft, and the national hovercraft museum will be hosting a four-day series of events in the last weekend of July.

The museum is just outside Portsmouth and is about 90 minutes by train from London.

More details at the Hovercraft Museum.

Update: for some bizzare reason I wrote that Navy Days 2009 is being held in Southampton. It is of course, in Plymouth. Sorry!

The second report on my tour of HMS Illustrious, this time with more words and fewer pictures.

I was joined by four other fellow London Bloggers, and after meeting up and trying to watch the helicopter demonstration that was happening over the riverside, we had to leave that to register inside a tent being used by the Navy inside the college grounds. As I told the officer my name, she looked up and exclaimed (I paraphrase):

“YOU! I’ve been wanting to meet you. How do you keep finding out what our navy ships are doing?”

“umm, umm!”

I was now having a slight heart-attack as I worried that I had published something on this blog or the events guide that shouldn’t have been published and caused all sorts of problems!

I explained that I use public sources such as the PLA website, the Royal Navy’s own website etc – and it actually turned out that she wanted to help with letting me know about notable events in London, so that I can then pass that information along to you who are reading this. Heart attack over, we waited outside, while the rest of the group sniggered at what happened and whether I was about to be picked up by MI5 for disclosing secrets.

After a briefing, we crocodile marched down to the pier where one of the local tourist boats had been commissioned to take visitors over the to aircraft carrier – the ship being too far from the shore for a walkway to reach. As we pulled up alongside, the boat skipper kept barking out instructions to hurry up and mind the gap as we jumped over the floating platform, then up a steep staircase to the entrance and straight into the aircraft hanger.

As you would expect, the hanger where aircraft, and general cargo is stored, is vast – with two large hydraulic lifts at either end dominating the space. What looked like torpedoes (mistaken initially for canoes!) are stored here, and we waited to be split into smaller more manageable groups. The visitors were a mixture of veterans, Scouts and some ordinary looking people, like us.

A walk along the flight deck to a side corridor to see a quick display of fire fighting kit – especially important if the ship were to be hit in action. While there are fire-fighting specialists on board, everyone is trained and quite evidently if a fire occurs, you just get on with dealing with it.

Down some steep and cramped steps to the lower floor and along to the Operations Room where all the radar etc displays are shown and a talk about how many people work here, which varies from about 6 on a quiet day to 60 during operations. I’m not sure how you fit 60 people in there, but the human spaces are cramped throughout, so I guess it works, somehow.

Now a climb up, up, up, about 6 flights to suddenly emerge onto the flight deck itself! Here, it was a general free-for-all, where we could wander round taking photos as we wished, and yes we could walk right up to the top of the “ski-jump” ramp which helps the planes take off. Going up to the top was a slightly nerve-wracking experience for your correspondent who is a bit iffy with heights, and I certainly wobbled a bit when I turned round, looked down at the flight-deck and saw how high up we are.

It certainly takes a select sort of person who could work in such an exposed environment, especially when at sea where the deck is going be moving around all over the place. I asked later about sea sickness, and while the size of the ship helps it be be more stable, people do get sea sick, especially during the first few weeks of being posted to the ship, or during bad weather. I doubt I would cope myself as I have an annoyingly delicate constitution in that regard.

We also had the delight of seeing one of the huge lifts drop down to collect some equipment (and humans) and come back up again. I noted most approvingly at the lack of fussy Health and Safety barriers while this happened. As the flight deck had just been in use for the earlier flight displays, the lift movement was functional rather than being a show-off for our benefit. In fact, even though the ship was just at anchor, there still seemed to be quite a bit of work going on around the place. I wonder if they are ever able to fully shut-down for a day?

After a while wandering round the flight deck for a while, we were taken up to the main command center, where the captain controls the ship and flight movements. Despite the vast space on the flight deck and the hanger below, the rest of the ship is a maze of very narrow corridors and stairwells, with every spare space even within the corridors used for some function or storage. The human side of the ship is surprisingly cramped when you consider the size of the whole vessel, and something worth remembering when thinking about the working life on board.

Some aspects I noted as we walked around were little things, such as some of the door signs were carved out of wood, maybe as a memory of the earliest wooden navy ships. Also, each of the stair wells had a heavy door which could be dropped down to seal off the area, but some had notes that they were to be left open during operations. I also noted the floor, which is made of steel has quite substantial textures carved into the metal to make it easier to keep your balance. Little issues, but interesting to see the thought that goes into these small, but very important aspects of the design.

After getting up to the command area, a very tiny steering column was shown – and that is what drives the ship. Yes, I know you don’t actually need a huge wheel to drive a ship now, but it is still odd to see such a tiny handle being used to control such a vast vessel.

I asked about something odd I saw, but the lady I asked said she couldn’t say what it was for. Whether that was because she didn’t know, or because I am not allowed to know I am not sure, but her smile suggested the latter.

That aside, they were very free with letting us take photos of what we saw, although we were advised to check each time, just in case something sensitive was around.

Back down to the hanger and a moment for more photos and questions and that was the tour over. We had spent a surprisingly swift hour on board, and the tour showed the key bits we would have wanted to see. The guide who took us around didn’t try to baffle us with too much technical details – this was very much a “point, look, gasp, move on” type of visit, which was frankly, exactly what worked for our group.

They also  set up a table in the hanger to sell a few mementos, and I picked up a branded mug to add to my collection of cups (I’ll explain another day). Not sure if the money went to a benevolent fund, of if I just helped to pay for a tiny bit of a missile.

We waited for a short while to leave and were suddenly ordered to step back behind a line. Thinking something exciting was about to happen, as we were standing next to the huge lifts – actually, the next tour group had arrived, and they just wanted to make sure the groups didn’t get mixed up.

That was it – sadly didn’t get a chance to say thanks to our guides as they were already dealing with the next group – and we left as we arrived, via the stairs down to the river.

Back on shore, a visit to the display for the ships which will eventually replace HMS Illustrious, the Queen Elizabeth Class carriers and then a couple of beers at the aptly named Cutty Sark pub.

–

Overall, a fascinating visit and I saw, and learnt a lot without being overwhelmed with technical jargon, and came away with an appreciation that it takes a certain person to be able to work in such an environment. While not for me, I can imagine that life on board can be both hard work, and yet very exciting, with opportunities to visit far-flung countries.

Huge thanks to the crew and officers of HMS Illustrious for inviting us onboard, and to the Royal Navy liaison officer who arranged the details (and gave me the heart attack earlier!).

I was joined by The Croydonian, Caroline’s Miscellany, 853 and Gendal World.

More photos at my usual Flickr Account.

Thanks to an awesome invitation from the Royal Navy, I had the pleasure of of an hour on board HMS Illustrious this afternoon.

I’ll do a proper write-up tomorrow as I am quite tired this evening – but if you have a free day, pop along tomorrow (Sunday) as the sight from the shore of the ship is very impressive, but also there are static displays in the College grounds along with a demonstration of flying helicopters intercepting a patrol boat at 2pm (best views from the riverside in front of the college).

Until tomorrow though – here are a few photos:

Static display in Greenwich

Inside the main hanger

Big Lifts!

From the top of the (very high) ski jump ramp

London from the flight-deck of HMS Illustrious

Greenwich riverside from the top of the flightdeck

Wandered down towards Greenwich at lunchtime to watch the flyover of 20 helicopters over HMS Illustrious as part of the week’s celebrations.

I actually stayed on the north side by Island Gardens as I hoped to get shots of helicopters and the old naval college in the background. Alas, the helicopters were, as expected, too high – but also unexpectedly further north than I expected, so the photos didn’t happen.

I also later learned that the formation carried on along the river right up to central London, which means I would have got much better photos from the comfort of my flat! Oh well, you live and learn

A collection of photos will be updated throughout the weekend.