I spent my summer volunteering in and around the dockyards, which was a fantastic and varied experience. I primarily worked with the National Museum of the Royal Navy (NMRN) inside the education centre, but also had the opportunity to work on board HMS Victory and in Gosport at the Explosion! museum. For more information please visit www.historicdockyard.co.uk – if anyone ends up working in the South of England, be aware that the dockyards run some fantastic workshops and activities from KS1 right through to KS3 and 4!I am going to use my blog post to share a few of the activities I was involved with while on placement…
Naval inventions and innovations Mission cards were dotted around, naming real problems the Navy faced in WW1, with suggestions of ideas that were attempted in order to solve them (some were really quite surprising and ended disastrously… like Admiral Popov and his round hulls… google it if you don’t believe me). Visitors were then challenged to build their own solution to the problems using Lego bricks!
Naval world art Visitors were invited to make a WW1 ship using templates provided, to create a fleet of ships (or U-boats) on a huge world map drawn onto the ground in chalk. There was a selection of resources to decorate the ships including materials to create pennant banners. My subject knowledge grew hugely through the duration of this activity: I discussed the many different types of boats used in WW1, the features of dazzle ships (of which there is the last remaining original being refurbished at the moment), how and why pennant flags were used, and how to come up with an effective name for your ship. Strong names such as Victory and Warrior were good as well as names of cities and girls names. Did you know that if a ship has success at sea, when it is decommissioned, it will probably pass its name on to a new ship?
Feed the fleet This workshop introduced the idea of scran – the Naval term for food – and allowed visitors to compare a modern Naval diet (from HMS Illustrious’ kitchen no less) to the diets of sailors on board HMS Victory around 250 years ago.
Some scran terms:
Cackle berries = eggs
Chicken on a raft = eggs on toast
Elephants footprint = spam fritters
NATO standard = tea with milk & two sugars
Oggie = cornish pasty
Pixie’s pillows = tinned ravioli
Seggies = grapefruit segments
Snorkers = sausages
Spithead pheasant = kippers
Tinned cow = condensed milk
Zeppelins in a fog = sausage and mash
Pot mess = everything available cooked into a stew
… YUM!
I’ve also attached some work I did from working on board HMS Victory: I've not packed everything in because I could go on forever (I literally FILLED a lever arch file – oops) but hopefully you can get some ideas for your journals or for different approaches to Naval history.
That’s all (for now) folks! Martha
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