Lord Horatio Nelson, the great and legendary Royal Navy admiral, no doubt dreamt of a fantastic naval machine having the ability to travel under the sea.
Yesterday I posted another piece on my visit to Portsmouth, UK. And at the end of that piece I wrote: "While at HMNB Portsmouth, I visited the insides of a sub...."
Indeed I did: the insides of HMS Alliance, a Royal Navy A-class (Amphion-class or Acheron-class) diesel-electric submarine. Essentially a Second World War sub, hence the "diesel-electric", she was literally opened up to the public in 1981, shortly after her decommissioning as a training ship, and now rests on dry-land cradles at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum in Gosport.
The above pic is the only one I took of the boat. Unfortunately, my camera was loaded with 100 ASA/ISO film, making sub-interior photography somewhat problematic — not instamatic. Besides, I enjoyed the tour so much that bringing my camera up to my eye was not a priority, certainly not in a submersible's cramped spaces. (I should have had my 28mm lens with me.)
Where does my love of submarines come from?... Probably from a television series I loved in my youth. I missed Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea in its original 1964 to 1968 run, but did watch it religiously when Buffalo, NY, television station WUTV stripped it at 5pm on weekdays in the early to mid 1970s. The nuclear submarine SSRN Seaview was a great and fantastic machine, one commanded by one Admiral Harriman Nelson.
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