On my last two days in San Diego I went on lots and lots of boats. Today’s and tomorrows entry will detail these adventures.
This is the USS Midway, a decommissioned aircraft carrier now set up as a permanent museum in San Diego. It’s so vast it was impossible to fit it all in a good photo without getting very far away!
Once on board, you are free to explore the expanse of the ship, listening to a self-guided audio tour throughout. Unfortunately I arrived in the afternoon, unaware that a complete exploration (which I would have loved to do) requires a full day! Luckily I spoke to a volunteer early on who guided me toward the ‘must see’ portions of the ship.
Many of the exhibits are dressed like the above, using EXTREMELY CREEPY mannequins showing what life on the ship was like for all manner of personnel. The above shot is of the shop near the enlisted crew quarters. As for what it was like to actually work, here’s a shot inside the radio room:
And here’s the captains chair (left) and me sitting in it (right):
Glancing at that shot of me, I am apalled that I walk around with a hat that has a Pikachu badge affixed to it. I can only imagine how eccentric people think I am!
Here’s what the view looks like to the captain when he is in his chair:
That is of course the deck, which is as big as a few (3, I think) football fields and now contains a bevy of impressive military aircraft.
I spent a long time talking to the guys that actually served onboard this ship (in the Vietnam, Korean and first Gulf War) as they told me about what it was like to take off and land on the ship, move planes between the deck and the hold, and even steer the ship to maintain the required speed for plane takeoff (yes, the ship must be moving).
All in all, a very good museum and well worth the visit if you are interested in things like this.
The next day I went to another maritime musem, this time dedicated to a motley collection of different craft. Here’s the flagship of their collection:
Yes yes, Master & Commander, Jester of Tortuga etc. It was impressive, I will admit (and very interesting belowdecks). But here’s why I really paid the admission fee; two different submarines!
That’s a US one on the left (a navy ship, but only ever used for research) and a Russian one on the right. Each of them were open and you could explore them fully at your leisure. The latter especially applied to me, since there didn’t seem to be anyone else at the museum when I was there 🙂
Here’s me sitting at the dining table in the US sub:
It was a smallish craft, with a crew of about 20 as I recall. And yet the interior was strangely uncramped, even in places comfortable, and I was surprised by how not-claustrophobic I became inside. As an exhibit it was wonderful, with virtually the entire craft available to explore and everything labelled informatively. The periscope even worked (and you could turn it!)
The Russian ship was a different beast altogether. As an exhibit it was perhaps even more impressive than the US sub, but looking at it from the point of view of the crew it seemed far more crowded, dangerous and user-unfriendly. Here’s a shot from somewhere inside the belly of the beast:
Note the circular hatch in the middle of the picture. There are four of these along the length of the sub, and they are about a meter from the floor and a meter in diameter. Visitors must get through these to explore the ship, and I can only imagine how many can’t and never get farther than walking down the stairs to get in. If you ever plan to visit this museum, make sure you are fit and agile and can worm your way through such a door!
The last shot of the entry goes to this:
What is it? It turns out tuna are attracted to floating wood, so tuna fisherman used to tie pieces of wood to their boats and throw them overboard. Successful boats would start treating their tuna-attracting wood as almost mystical objects, and they became possessed of such value they would in some cases be treated with more respect than sailors or the boat itself. This particular “fishing log” was said to be one of the very best from a boat that used to fish out of San Diego.
Tomorrow’s entry will be about fish as well, although fish of a large, furry and distinctly mammalian kind 🙂
The aircraft carrier and US sub weren’t there when Lakshmi and I were last in San Diego, but the tall ship and Russian sub were.
The Russian sub was definitely user unfriendly, I can’t imagine what it must have been like to not only be at sea, but under the water and potentially being shot at.
There is (or used to be) an old Australian sub on display in Sydney which was also hellishly cramped inside. I remember bulks and hammocks strung up in random places. There was room for sleeping spaces for only a third of the crew. The idea being that at any given time a third of the crew was on duty, a third off duty and a third sleeping.
B.: You’re thinking of the HMAS Onslow at the Australian National Maritime Museum. “Hellishly cramped” is right. That thing could have been used as a recruiting tool by the army and air force!