Still alive

Hello people…

Yeah, I know… I haven’t been writing for a couple of weeks now and I’m terribly sorry. Time is again a very precious asset for me and I really need to use it wisely these days. I know it can sound presumptuous, but unfortunately this is the raw truth.

Well, apologies made, let’s see what’s cool.

First of all, I’m really happy in my new job. It is cool and that’s the simplest thing I can say about that. People are cool, I fancy the work environment and everything is fine. My first project is approaching completion, everything went smooth and quiet and we should be going out to drink some beers next week to celebrate its end. But you know, project finished, project assigned. I have my name listed as a possible member of the team for more than a dozen projects for the next month. I like that.

Friday was my first “Community Day”. The communities in my company are a sort of group of people who share the same interests. It can bee people enthusiast of .NET, people who fancy Java, people who like relational databases and even people related to business development and whatever.

What happens is that every six weeks my company dedicates a full day that these groups can use to meet, discuss and decide what to do to make their interests interesting also to the company and profitable. This is also a great opportunity for people working on project to share their problems and get help from all the community.

The company decides one of the offices (we have a building in central London and the main offices in Egham – Surrey) and everyone meets there. Obviously, it means that we have all the people from both offices and plus the people that is usually in customer site. The office is jam packed and everything is a mess, but it is cool.

After the work, everyone stops by a pub to drink a few beers and enjoy a talk with colleagues and why not make some new friendships. It greatly increases the feeling of belonging to a company, mainly for people that is usually assigned to client sites.

Other than work, I have been trying to keep myself very busy on my journey to discover the UK. The UK is awesome with so many different places, cultures, colours and landscapes and such a strong and important history that everywhere you go you will find something interesting.

I also like to spend some time in the weekend driving, as I really fancy driving and my new car is a real pleasure to ride.

Taking those two things into consideration, last week we looked at a map and picked up a place in random. It was Canterbury. You will probably find this name familiar as there are the Canterbury Tales, written a few hundreds of years ago telling about the pilgrims heading to that city and their tales. Well, Canterbury was in fact a place for pilgrims to go since 1170. The reason for that is that this city hosts the Cathedral that was the mother church of all the Anglican Faith. It was also the place where Thomas Becket was martyred.

The Cathedral is still there. The original, from 1100 A.C. is now the crypt beneath the newer one from 1200 A.C. circa. The cathedral is surely one of the most beautiful I have ever seen both by its power and simplicity. Unlike many other churches in many other places, you can walk a lot inside the cathedral and access many places, including its cloisters and gardens.

Other than the cathedral, the city is what you expect from an English town. The architecture, the pubs, the restaurants, the streets… They are so neat, beautiful and colourful. I really like that place. There is another interesting about that town: its radius is of 1.5 miles. You can easily walk the entire city in one day if you want. Canterbury is a must see for everyone.
The bad thing about our trip to Canterbury is that we decided at the last minute, we didn’t thought we were going to see so great things and we didn’t brought our photo camera with us, so, no pictures… :-( We will be going back there, though, and then we will make sure we picture the entire city.

Today, instead, we headed all the way south to a place named Portsmouth. The city looks kind of nice place, but we haven’t paid much attention to it. Out destination there was the Historic Dockyards.

The city of Portsmouth is an important port for England from many centuries. It is located in a very good geographical position and is easy to reach from both Europe and other places. It was the most important port during the sea conquests and is market by lots of history.

In the Historic Dockyards, with many modern warships there are three jewels. There are three proves of the greatness of human craftsmanship and hugely important pieces of history. These are three ships:

The Mary Rose
The H.M.S. Victory
The H.M.S. Warrior 1860

These ships are all incredibly important. I will tell you why they are so important as I tell you what we saw.

The oldest of these three ships is the Mary Rose. This ship was built between 1509 and 1511 by order of King Henry VIII. This was a first rate ship (first rate are the front line battle ships) and has had a very successful story until 1545, when by causes not well known (there are many theories) it accidentally sank. The ship was then forgotten until 1965, when a man named Alexander McKee started his journey searching for disappeared ships.

In 1965, in conjunction with the Southsea branch of the British Sub- Aqua Club, he initiated project 'Solent Ships'. While on paper a plan to examine a number of known wrecks in the Solent, Alex McKee really hoped to find the Mary Rose.

Ordinary search techniques proved unsatisfactory so something different was needed. The answer was side-scan sonar. The collaboration of Professor Harold E. Edgerton (MIT) and John Mills, the British representative of his firm EG & G, led to the discovery of the wreck site. They provided the sonar systems and operated them, and in 1967 discovered a strange sub-seabed anomaly. This was confirmed by a further sonar survey in 1968. Alex McKee believed the Mary Rose had been rediscovered.

In November 1967 the Mary Rose (1967) Committee was formed.

What was needed now was proof that the anomaly was indeed the Mary Rose. Between 1968 and 1971, diving on the site was carried out by a team of volunteers who called themselves Mad Mac's Marauders. This was accomplished from very small boats and on a vanishingly small budget.

The climax to this operation came when, on the 5th of May 1971, Percy Ackland discovered three of the port frames of the Mary Rose.

In 1982, in the most ambitious underwater archaeological project in the world the remains of the Mary Rose where raised from its tomb and it was brought to Portsmouth, to a dry dock which was then transformed in an enormous restoration laboratory. Since them they are spraying on the remains a liquid solution that is penetrating the wood. This solution will help in the conservation of the almost 500 years old wood.

The remains of the ship are obviously heavily damaged, but it is impressive to see such a huge ship in these conditions. They will stop spraying the conservation solution in 2009 and by 2011 they will have dry up and will have built a museum around it. This museum will be inaugurated by the time of the 500th anniversary of the ships launch.

There is also a museum with lots of objects collected from the ships site underwater. There are coins, clothes, personal utensils, weapons, pieces of the ship and many other amazing things. This is the only 16th century ship on display anywhere in the world.

There was then the second ship. I can’t say which one from the second and the third I consider more important. The first has a huge historical importance while the second was an amazing technological achievement for its time.

Let’s start by the glorious H.M.S. Victory. This ship was first launched in the sea in 1765. Between that date and 1800 it has accumulated one of the most successful careers ever seen in the British naval force. But it was in 1805 that this ship would fight and win the most important battle of its life and perhaps the most important naval battle in the history of the United Kingdom.

This ship, commanded by Vice-Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson fought the battle of Trafalgar against the French and Spanish fleets under power of Napoleon and commanded by the Admiral Villeneuve.

In that battle, the British fleet sank 18 enemy ships and killed something like 14,000 foes, ten times the number of Britons dead.

The most important casualty of that battle was, however, Lord Nelson himself who was wounded by a sharpshooter from an enemy ship. He died several hours after the battle, but knowing that he won one of the most important battles from the strategic point of view and probably ended any possibility for Napoleon to invade its arch-rival lands of Britain.

The ship was de-commissioned 7 years later in 1812 and was anchored in Portsmouth. For the next 110 years the ship remained at her moorings in the harbour fulfilling some practical and ceremonial roles.

In 1922, amid fears of her continued survival the ship was moved in the Portsmouth Royal Naval Dockyards and placed in the No2 dry dock. It was then restored and to her fighting 1805 condition and opened to the public.

The ship is awesome and breathtaking. It is like a live piece of a history that we usually see only in books. The ship is completely armed, equipped and loaded as if it was just ready to go to the battle. The wooden smells are wonderful. The visit to the ship is a guided tour and you can walk all the four decks. You can see where people slept, eat and were medically treated.

You can also see the exact spot where Lord Nelson was shot in the upper deck and the spot where he actually died in the second lower deck. You can see all the instruments, furniture and even clothes.

The only pity is that you can’t take pictures inside the ship, so you will be able to see only its outside.

The last ship, the H.M.S. Warrior 1860 was the ship that overnight made all other battle ships in the world obsolete. That ship was the biggest, fastest, and more heavily armed than any other ship in the world.

As the name suggests, it was first launched in 1860 and was powered from both steam engines and sail and was constructed of wrought iron. This ship burnt 11 tons of coal per hour when in full speed.

This ship was neglected for nearly 100 years and survived almost by miracle. Then she was restored to her full glory of her launch in 1860 and is now open for everyone to see. You can walk freely almost the entire ship and it is still in water, being even rented for special occasions like weddings, parties and other rich people’s stuff.

From a quick look in the ship, after coming from the H.M.S. Victory, you can easily spot the differences that nearly 100 years can make in technology. This ship is much more advanced, armed, liveable and spacious than the other.

When you go down to the first deck, you can easily see the difference in heights and the size of its cannons as well as a much bigger kitchen and many other improvements for the crew.

There are weapons everywhere. You could easily grab a dagger, sword or fire gun from the roof above you or the walls dividing the rooms. It was all there ready for battle. If you go down to the lower deck, you can see the huge and impressive machine room. There are the steam engines and all the machinery that moves that colossal piece of engineering.

The ship is beautiful and impressive.

We have had also a trip by water to see some modern warships and have seen some museums. All very interesting.

I will be posting several pictures of the ships shortly, so, make sure you reload this page often to see what’s coming new.

Well, now I will end here. I will go take a bath and prepare to start a new working week tomorrow.

Just a last reminder: I will be shutting down my Italian personal cell phone in the next weekend (Saturday 29th), so, who haven’t got my UK mobile number, please send me an e-mail to paulo@reichert.co.uk and I will reply with the number.

Cheers all and keep in touch.