Greenwich

Greenwich, Friday 3/3. [photo: Alice straddling the Greenwich Meridian at the Old Royal Observatory.] Cloudy and cold, but no rain today. We had coffee and crumpets for breakfast and admired the view until leaving around 9:30. It was a longish walk, about 2 miles through not very inspiring territory before we got to the Cutty Sark and turned right up the slope to the National Maritime Museum. Some of it is for kids, including a particularly annoying interactive video that would speak two sentences and ask you to press GO to continue. Most of it is for adults, though, and there were boats of different kinds including a splendid Royal Barge (1732) and the first single-engined boat to break the 100 mph barrier (1932?). The Nelson exhibit, although missing a lot because they’re preparing a special exhibit for later this year, had the star attraction still on display: the coat he was wearing when he was shot at the Battle of Trafalgar. The musket ball came from the rigging of the French ship nearby and traveled down through his shoulder and broke his spine. Next door was a computer/video war-room style recreation of the battle and around the walls many paintings of the Last and Nearly Last Moments of Nelson.

We had coffee and a scone and admired the collection of nautical instruments and Admiralty Silver, but time was passing and I wanted to see the clocks so we went up the hill to the Old Royal Observatory. The view was great, one of the best in the city, and if it hadn’t been so cold we might have stayed outside longer. The first clock was on the outside wall with a display of exact measurements – markers for a yard, a foot, half-foot and one inch.

In fact this observatory could also be called the Museum of Exactitude. The first Astronomer Royal holed up here and spent 40 years compiling star charts. The reason for this was longitude; it could not be calculated without either a very accurate clock (and at sea there was no such device, yet) or with a precise star chart and a lot of mathematics. Sir Christopher Wren designed an observatory room, they put a bunch of clocks in it, including one with a 13’ pendulum, and the astronomer went to work.

Downstairs was a fascinating exhibit about the invention of the chronometer. In the end, the chronometer made the star charts obsolete, but at the time both goals were being pursued – nobody knew which would happen first. Over a period of 30 years or so Mr. Harris created four “chronometers”, the last of which proved to be, as the museum put it, one of the most important inventions in history, because it made safe and efficient navigation at sea possible. And all four of these chronometers are there. The first three are huge – the size of 20” televisions. During the building of H3 Mr. Harris realized he had to do something radically different, and H4 is the size of a Bendix alarm clock. It’s just a very large pocket watch, but it was accurate to within a second a month.

The rest of the museum had more modern clocks, including the one that for years sent the ‘six pips’ signal to the BBC where it was relayed all over the world, allowing people to synchronize to Greenwich Mean Time.

After resetting our watches we went back down the hill to the Queen’s House, formerly home to Queen Henrietta Maria (Charles I), and 100 years ago home to a school for boys intending to serve in the Navy (with a large ship on the front lawn for practice, everybody up at 5 a.m. for a swim in an unheated pool), more recently a place where Queen Elizabeth spent part of her childhood, and much more recently restored to its original splendor. But, much much more recently the London Guide says, “… in a major act of cultural vandalism, the interior decorations of the Queen's Apartments have been ripped out and replaced with a display of third-rate naval paintings.” I agree. My taste in paintings isn’t highly developed, but it did seem as if they wanted to display everything they had, good or not. There are two Reynolds, and the main piece is the Battle of Trafalgar by Turner, which is, after all, a Turner. Huge painting, perhaps 12x20 feet.

So it was natural to want to head for the Trafalgar Tavern. On the way we stopped at the former Royal Naval College, now part of what’s called Greenwich University, and saw the Painted Hall where Nelson lay in state, and the chapel which was like being inside a piece of Wedgwood.

Greenwich, it says in many guides, is a terrible place for food. The Trafalgar did not let the guides down, but it had great atmosphere and sits right on the river, so the view is good too. Take the guides’ advice and go there for a beer only.

We walked back to the Cutty Sark, on the Thames Path, and the high tide got our shoes wet a couple of times. Alice had voted for a return bus trip hours before, so we took the 199 back to the Riverside Youth Club and walked back to our flat. Good or bad, the pub food had been enough so we skipped dinner and went to bed early. We seemed to have either missed jet lag or walked it off!