ANZAC Day remembered
Portsmouth Naval Base was the setting for a ceremony to mark WWI anniversary
Last Tuesday in Portsmouth Naval Base, on board one of only three ships surviving from World War One, monitor HMS M33, ANZAC Day was remembered.
A small party attended the ceremony, led by a naval chaplain.
Four wreaths were laid, one each from the Australian Defence Force, The New Zealand Navy, The Royal Navy and the National Museum of the Royal Navy.
Lt Cdr Lucian Banea RAN read a remembrance, written by Turkish President Mustafa Kemal Ataturk who served at Gallipoli.
The Act of Remembrance was read by Cdr Michael Maher RN. The Still was piped by AB Cameron Riddell.
Two Royal Marine buglers played the Last Post and after a silence Reveille the thirty minute service ended with the Lord’s Prayer and the National Anthem.
HMS M33 was an M29 class monitor built for the Royal Navy in 1915 by Harland and Wolff in Belfast. She was armed with two guns. She saw active service in the Mediterranean, including Gallipoli and in Russia in 1919.
She was later used as a minelaying training ship, fuelling hulk and a boom defence workshop. She was later renamed HMS Minerva Hulk 23.
During the Gallipoli campaign she supported the British troops landing in Sulva Bay and remained on station until British, Australia and New Zealand troops were evacuated in January 1916.
In 2014 she was handed over to the National Museum of the Royal Navy in 2014 for preservation.
From last Wednesday, M33 was open to the public. With a crew of 72 you can see what privations the men had to deal with in those far off days. Two sinks to clean themselves, along with two lavatories.
The galley is 8ft by 8ft with the cooks working in compact surroundings, having to feed all the crew two or perhaps three meals a day. The ship is berthed opposite HMS Victory’s stern.
It has taken five years to bring her up to a standard that is fit for visitors and is crewed entirely by volunteers.
Next Saturday is Coronation Day and there will no doubt be many street parties going on.
I am sure there must be plenty of photographs lying in readers’ drawers from the last one.
Two days later, May 8, it is the 78th anniversary of VE day in 1945.
I have a selection ready to go in but, if you have a photograph please scan and email it to me at bobhind2014@icloud.com by next Wednesday please.
How many of you watch the TV programme Homes Under the Hammer?
There always seems to be some DIY wizard who purchases a terraced house that is unfit for human habitation and turns it into, basically, a palace.
I think of this when I saw that in 1966 Portsmouth City Council decided on a clearance programme to demolish 6,100 ‘uninhabitable' properties. The future of yet another 854 houses within the council’s green area was undecided.
In 1970, the council suggested a number of properties in a compact area north of the railway cutting from Fratton Bridge to the Jacobs Ladder footbridge, a total of 158 houses, should also be added to the clearance programme.
These were 3-77 and 2-90 Lucknow Street, 1A-55 Sydenham
Terrace. 226-238 Somers Road North and 1-31 Fratton Road.
The village atmosphere that existed with small privately owned shops and many local pubs would be lost for ever.
The residents were moved from much-loved terraced house into high-rise blocks of flats, losing the neighbourly feel that once existed.
Did you live in any of the properties that were demolished in the clearance scheme? Were the houses so bad that they could not be modernised?
If you can remember these times and losing your home, please drop me a line.