Old and New Ships

Old and New Ships

Monday 10th May 2021

As we came up the Elizabeth River into Portsmouth yesterday we saw a replica of an old colonial square rigger up on land to the south of the marina. Today we wandered over to take a closer look and found that it is a replica of the “Susan Constant”, a vessel that carried some 71 colonists over from England in 1606 and returned the following year. The replica looks beautiful but unfortunately we couldn’t get very close because it’s in a boatyard that works on military projects and is not accessible. There is a tremendous amount of naval work here in the Norfolk-Portsmouth area and we have seen three aircraft carriers within 1-mile of our marina. This got me wondering what proportion of the active fleet does this represent? According to Wiki the USA has 11 active aircraft carriers along with 2 more under construction and a further 2 on order. I don’t know if the three that we have seen are “active” but under repair or they include new construction. On previous occasions we have seen additional carriers a few miles north of here at the Norfolk Naval station, so that’s a large proportion of the USA carrier fleet that are in this area. 

The highlight today was meeting up with Charlotte and Klaus. (Charlotte is Fran’s sister). We had lunch at the local German Bier Garden, where the food and beer were excellent – between us we ate rouladen, schnitzel, spetzle, red cabbage, Brussels sprouts and bacon salad. Although it wasn’t a particularly warm day we were fortunate that the rain held off and we all wore enough clothes to stay comfortable. It was great to catch up with Charlotte and Klaus - it’s been two years since we last saw them when we were returning from our Caribbean trip. Unfortunately, I was so focused on my food and drink that I forgot to take any photos. Sorry!

Tomorrow we will try and do a little re-provisioning and no doubt wander around town.

Mike

36 49.867 N, 76 17.760 W

A replica of the colonial square rigger "Susan Constant" (I had to climb on a wrecked and abandoned boat in a car park to shoot over the fence to get this photo!)

The former lightship "Portsmouth" is now a museum but was initially stationed off Cape Charles at the entrance to Chesapeake Bay, then later off Stonehorse shoal in Massachusetts

Aircraft carrier under repair in Norfolk

The Norfolk Portsmouth Ferry docked at one of two stops on the Portsmouth side of the river, with the large aircraft carrier under repair on the Norfolk side.

Aircraft carrier under repair in Norfolk as seen from one of the two Portsmouth Ferry docks