Diamond Jubilee Thames Pageant...no show for many!

Failing to arrive at the Thames before dawn didn't help me get a good place to see the river pageant, but if I had I think I would have been moved on from my hoped for place by the Timepiece at St.Katherine's lock. I got there to find it firmly blocked off, and moving towards the Tower of London embankment I found the gates closed, a well dressed group waiting to be let in, I learn from them that only those with an invitation were allowed beyond, and lo behold, an official sort of person began to address them, by the size of this group it was clear they weren't going to be crowded. Thousands of people will have been denied a chance to see the Pageant so a few chosen ones could do so in comfort. I thought this was supposed to be  a public/peoples event? It certainly didn't take this to keep people clear of the saluting battery at the west end of this place. Tower bridge was of course raised and the media were there in force as I expected, the public offered one of the few video screens I saw but wasn't prepared to struggle forwards to. Further along the river exclusion abounded, crowd control I understand, privileged access less so. People came in the night and probably arrived with a milk bottle to pee in were surely the ones who did best!
Readers comments on the BBC News website tell of similar exclusions on the south side of the river, someone in Shad Thames was asked for a ticket he never had. Trying to show  a million plus people something in an environment not set up for it can't be done, but I think everyone should have had a fair crack of the whip. I had to stand one footed on a plastic traffic cone to get my few seconds of river footage, it didn't take my weight long. I know the rain clouds didn't scare many off, but I think it was all a bit ignorant of the many who opened a brolly the moment it rained, lot of anger and argument breaking out among the affected, this doesn't seem to have been shown by the media who concentrated on what went right. A veteran of Trafalgar square at New years eve, I ought to have known better perhaps and watched all this at home? Next time theres a Jubilee Pageant on the river Thames I'll do that!
AAWWEE..cheer up, check out my latest painting, ...'The Blue Ensign'

Jubilee approaches

The Diamond Jubilee Thames Pageant will be tomorrow afternoon, the Queen will be disembarking from her boat the Spirit of Chartwell at HMS President, I will try to get a vantage point by arriving a few hours early, I hope I'm not brushed aside by ITN or the BBC! I missed the Queens reopening of the Cutty Sark because of a dental appointment I plain couldn't forego, I don't want to miss this!
St.Katherines dock has been brightened up by oodles of bunting and flags on the Yachts there, lots of on board parties as apposed to street parties...see this brief video, I hope I will have much more to offer tomorrow...we shall see!

The Source of the Thames

The source of the Thames has come under debate again ...over to the BBC!.. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-17858944

Return of the Robin

Robin at West India Quay before restoration

Working under the Spanish flag as 'Maria'

The worlds oldest complete steamship, the ss Robin was returned to London in July last year to the Royal Victoria dock on a floating pontoon, where the last parts of her restoration will be completed hopefully in time for the Olympics, not that she will be running in anything!
She spent some time at St.Katherine's dock and years at  West India Quay under the shadow of preserved dockyard cranes of the past near the DLR station.
In 2008 she was taken up to Lowestoft for restoration. 
She was launched in 1890 at Blackwall in London not so far from where she has been returned. She is one of three core collection Historic ships in London, the other two are Cutty Sark and HMS Belfast, both of which I've already written about here.
Like Cutty Sark she was built to a standard far above the norm, in this case to 100A1 steel ..put simply the very best. She also, like Cutty Sark many years with Iberian ship owners who clearly keep things going longer than us. Her boiler by the way is Scottish, she was towed oop narth to Dundee to have those fitted. I don't ever remeber going to sea in a ship that didn't have a Scottish engineer aboard.
She didn't spend too much time under the British flag though, she was sold to a Spanish company in 1900 and stayed a working vessel until 1974...that is just about incredible.
She was saved from the scrapyard for restoration though, and the Robin Trust have a really good website all about her life and times .... The Robin Trust
I'm planning a painting of this ship but some research will be needed as her appearance changed here and there over the years, I don't want to mess that up!
I'm really looking forward to her opening up to the public.

When Ellen MacArthur came up the Thames

Ellen MacArthur about to board the Cutty Sark

The Trimaran B&Q at Greenwich

Sunday 20th February 2005 was a special day, British yachtswoman 28 year old  Ellen MacArthur was visiting London in her Trimaran racing yatch, the B&Q. Fifteen days earlier she had broken the world record for sailing around the world solo, this had been done in 71 days, 14 hours, 18 minutes and 33 seconds, the record would hold until 2008, when it was relinquished by her friend Francis Joyon.

She sailed up the Thames to the crowded Tower Bridge and back down to Greenwich where she would do a walk around to meet the public and appear on a giant video screen outside the Tea clipper Cutty Sark. Like millions of others I had been following her progress all the way, I hoped she wouldn't sacrifice her purple mascot Slinky to Father Neptune at the equator  and she didn't, sending him a piece of jewelry instead.

I was determined to get a 'celebrity snap' and after photographing her boat on the Thames (see above) went to a metal bollard near the door cut in the ships side, before the crowds gravitated there, that was as close as the public could get and actually a couple of feet past the erected fence too...I was still a member of the Cutty Sark Trust and wore the badges, but still glared at the jobsworth  security guard with X-ray eyes 'don't you dare'...he let me stay probably because I'd only get a replacement, so there I perched like  a Pixie for more than an hour on a post just big enough to balance on...just a bit uncomfortable but I was well rewarded with the photo you see above. A korean girl next to me had wanted a photo and an autograph, but never got either, act is Ellen was being ushered away from the crowd at this point onto her next stage aboard the ship to meet people like the Mayor of Greenwich and friends. Secret here is to stay focused!

Later that week I discovered a friend of mine was the cab driver who took her away to her hotel in the evening..small world as well as a giant one!

Find her website on my Links page!.. http://www.seawitchartist.com/links.htm

Sea Shepherds 'Steve Irwin' came to London

The 'Steve Irwin'

The 'Steve Irwin' passing Tower Bridge

On September 5th last year London had what many people would call a very special ship visiting, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Societies (SSCS) flagship the Steve Irwin. This hero of the Whale wars stayed mostly at West India dock on the Isle  of Dogs, but on the 12th she came up river and passed Tower Bridge to visit HMS Belfast next to which she tied up as many deep water vessels will, a fund raising dinner night was held aboard the Steve Irwin which left early the next morning.  
She arrived in her still rather new dazzle style naval camouflage and as it happens I was being dazzled by the sun that just had to show it's face when I took the photos, this paint scheme was developed in WW2 to help convoy escort vessels escape the eyes of U boats, it's worn also by the HMS Belfast. Previously she had been painted black. The SSCS version of the Jolly Roger is painted on the front below the ships bridge. She currently flies a Netherlands flag, the 77 you see on the bow represents 1977, the year SSCS was founded.She looked every inch a small warship armed to the teeth with catapults for the fabled butter bombs favoured by the Sea Shepherd Society, the butteric acid they splatter the poor defenseless  whaler with is harmless but atrociously smelly, stick your nose in bucket of vomit and you'll get the idea.
The Steve Irwin is the 53 meter former Scottish fisheries protection vessel Westra , built in 1959, she was bought after being laid up a while by Sea Shepherd and renamed Robert Hunter after a Co founder of the Greenpeace Foundation and close friend of SSCS president Paul Watson, he died in 2005. Later in 2007 prior to starting their operation Migaloo in the Southern ocean she was again renamed this time as the Steve Irwin after the late Australian conservationist. You can read about the entire current SSCS fleet on their website page here http://www.seashepherd.org/who-we-are/the-fleet.html
Also, I found this very good video of her visit...

HMS Belfast

HMS Belfast & Tower Bridge

Sailing Barge passing HMS Belfast

The largest historic ship on the Thames is HMS Belfast, a town class cruiser that is maintained in the Pool of London by the Imperial War Museum. She was built by Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast, the connection obviously stuck. Accepted into the Royal Navy in August 1939 just in time for WW2 she got of to a bad start, hitting a sea mine in November that same year, she was out of it for repairs until August 1942, a long repair that had her return with better guns, armour and radar she did escort duties in the arctic for convoys going tot he Soviet Union in 1943. In December 1943 she took part in the battle of the North Cape where the German battleship Scharnhorst  was sunk. In 1944 she took part in operation Overlord, the D-day landings.

Thereafter sent to the Pacific area, she arrived just before wars end. Her final actions were in the Korean war. She left the Royal Navy in August 1963 and nearly got scrapped but was saved by the HMS Belfast Trust  in 1971 after the government ignored efforts to have her restored and kept as a museum ship. Tight sods.  She then became part of the Imperial War Museum in 1978. I went on her a few times in the 1980's myself.

It's not unusual to see visiting warships or cruise liners tied up next to her, this is because her Jetty that keeps her in deep water whatever the tide is the only one left that's up to the job, she therefore makes other things possible. 

She has been in the news recently, in November 2011 a pedestrian gangway was being repaired when this went tits up and it fell in the river, two workmen had slight injuries, but I think the reaction was way over the top myself, even though I flew down to the river to make a video (see below) when I heard the news flash. She is due to reopen after Easter..wow, that took  long time!