Portsmouth Harbour has many ancient and not so old wrecks within it’s watery margins, many of which have been logged by marine archeologists. Despite the wreak locations being logged many of the craft remain unidentified and for many of the small craft despite being identified much of their history is unknown.
Located on the shoreline close to Priory Road in Gosport is the wreak of MMS113 which was chosen by a group of Maritime Archaeology Students from the University of Southampton as the subject of a full historical and archaeological survey. The wreak was well known by the local people and a Facebook page was set up to try and find out as much information about the minesweeper. The page collected together many pieces of information about the history of the craft both in it’s life before becoming a wreak and after as well as some paintings and photos resulting in the wreak’s history being mapped out from construction to it’s last resting place.
If this sounds interesting check the Facebook page to find out more plus if you know any more information be sure to get in touch with them.
Do You Know This Wreak?
Southsea Boutique Market ask that you come along to their fun vintage style market on the first Saturday of every month at St Swithun’s Church Hall, just off Albert Road Southsea. They have a fine selection of friendly sellers all waiting to meet you and show what great talent we have in Southsea. There is beautiful handmade jewellery, stunning decoupage items, superb hand crafted wares lovingly created especially for the market by local traders, as well as an array of wonderful vintage and pre-loved clothing, books and toys we will have plenty to look at, buy and see.
Come and browse or simply join them for a cup of tea and delicious handmade cake served on the finest vintage crockery China. Free tasty barley water squash for children when tea or cake is purchased! You will be warmly welcomed to our fun market with a terrific atmosphere. Check out all the details over at their Facebook.
Click HERE to take a little journey out in to the Solent for view of Gosport & Portsmouth courtesy of Pete Thornes panoramic.
Portsmouth’s BIG Day Out is just round the corner offering all sorts of deals at Restaurants, Bars, Cafes, Museums, The Dockyard, Spinnaker and much more. Check out all the details of at www.portsmouthbigdayout.co.uk and also at their Facebook. To view the terms and conditions for this weekend, please click HERE
In response to our last post regarding the cancellation of funding for the Hayling Island Ferry we are pleased to let you know that the service is no longer under threat – PCF has been notified by Cllr Jason Fazackarley that PCC will not be cutting the subsidy. Cllr Fazackarley said:
“It [the ferry] is saved, I have removed this [the proposed cut] as an offered saving by officers so Portsmouth contribution towards the ferry operation will remain unchanged. I cannot speak for any changes that the County Council may decide to make but Portsmouth City Council will NOT be making any cut to the subsidy.”
Hopefully some of you contacted you councillors and I know some of you even got responses:
Dear Martin, Thanks for the email. We have looked at this matter today and the money has been found to cover this. Thank you for taking the time and trouble to contact us.
Cllrs Lee Hunt & Margaret Adair
Just look how happy we all are. Good job too as we’ll be riding over to Hayling this weekend and taking the Ferry back after a few jars at The Ferry Inn. Hip hip hooray.
Photos: Tristan Savage & Paul Gonella
Thanks to Jon Spencer for bringing this to our attention. Take action now, “The proposed city council budget for 2011/12 onwards proposes that the subsidy currently offered to the Hayling Ferry be cancelled. This will more than likely spell the end for the ferry service which provides a great route into and out of the city for cyclists and pedestrians. The budget will go to the vote at council on tuesday 8th February. If you would like the service to be saved then please phone, email or write to your ward councillors to ask them to oppose the motion to scrap the subsidy. Find your ward councillors HERE. Some reasons why the ferry needs to remain:
The Hayling ferry provides vital access to a rural area to the residents of Portsmouth. This is one of the very few rural areas that is accessible to the people of Portsmouth without requiring access to a car. Our MP, Mike Hancock, spoke very eloquently on the breakfast news on this week about how vital public access to rural areas is to the wellbeing of a community and how he was therefore, in opposition to his government’s plans to sell off woodland. He was absolutely right to make this stand but it will be prove pointless if means of accessing such rural areas are removed.
Despite the assertions made in appendix C of the budget report, the Hayling ferry is widely used by citizens of Portsmouth. It is used daily by workers at Hayling, Havant and Langstone (and further afield) who commute by bike. It is heavily used by people who wish to visit the beaches or to use the popular Billy Trail by foot or by bike. The Hayling Ferry link is part of the UK national cycle network route 2 and as such is used by cyclists from across the UK to get into Portsmouth.
The major transport challenge Portsmouth faces is surely the fact that most of the city is on an island and there are very few access routes. Removing one of these routes is surely, at best, extremely unwise? This will increase pressure on the already extremely congested Eastern Road and will remove, at a stroke, the most pleasant way onto and off of Portsea Island.
The Hayling Ferry is good value. It’s annual subsidy of £15,000 is only about 1.3% of what the pyramids is costing the city this year. In terms of the value of the leisure and travel opportunities it presents it is punching well above its weight.”
The Solent forts are iconic and a key part of the unique Portsmouth and Southsea seascape and as such are always inspiring photos both by photographers and visitors. A new Flickr group has been set up specifically for the Spitbank Fort to highlight the fort in particular and has loads of photos from both the shoreline and from close up, worth a look.
View the group HERE.
Photo by Angus
Photo by Dan Bernard
The Hayling Ferry will resume service today, January 4th after passing its third safety inspection. The Pride of Hayling, which travels between Eastney and Hayling Island, was inspected by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and the vessel was stopped from carrying passengers last month after failing its annual safety checks.
The vessel can now resume its service between Hayling Island and Eastney. The vessel’s owner and skipper worked hard to resolve the issues with the vessel’s safety management system and we’re now satisfied with all aspects of the vessel’s operation.
The ferry has been running for more than 200 years, linking Hayling Island to Portsmouth. It is used by schoolchildren to get to school each day and can travel up to 30 times a day during the week. The only alternative to the three-minute ferry ride is a 32-mile round trip by road.
Brodnax Moore (@mrbroddy) gave us the heads up via Twitter on how good the live Gosport Ferry webcam is. The webcam is located on the Gosport dock side with a view of the harbour traffic and the Spinnaker Tower, HMS Warrior and HMS Victory. Sitting on the dock remotely from your warm house is now possible!
www.gosportferry.co.uk/webcam.php
Confession, I love nautical charts. I’m really not sure why but if I walk in to a pub and spy one on the wall I have to have a good look. I think it’s partly because they add unusual layers of detail that don’t exist on normal maps (tidal changes, measured depths, wreaks, etc) and also because every sandbank, channel, island, nook and cranny has a name and more often than not an interesting name giving hints to the history of that particular location. In their own way they take on an artistic form merging cartography and patterns of statistical data related to changes in nature.
Langstone Harbour and Chichester Harbour are both tidal and very large and as such nautical charts of the area are heavy with intriguing detail about a location many of us know so well. The Chichester Harbour Conservancy website has an amazing interactive chart of the harbours that allow you to navigate around and the zoom in to find out more. I spent quite some time exploring the small channels below Thorney Island, the small islands in Langstone Harbour, the different creeks at Bosham and The Winner sandbank at East Head.
As well as being something interesting for the curious, practical for the sailors and also artistically beautiful in it’s own way the chart has given me some good ideas for walks and a bit of exploring. Time to figure out tide times to see if I can explore those Langstone Harbour islands with my camera…
www.conservancy.co.uk/page/Chart/326/
Below are a couple of screen grabs of the chart. Get exploring.
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