August 5, 2026

August 5, 2026

Staying up all day in London yesterday must have worked. We both slept ten hours last night. Hopefully that means we are over our jet lag.

Because of London over-tourism, most sites these days are timed entry. So today I bought a day pass to visit the World Heritage Site of Maritime Greenwich. It is on the Thames east of London, so we have to leave early to make our first appointment. It takes over an hour to get there by Tube. The last section goes through the historic Docklands. This area on the Thames, also called Canary Wharf, was once the world’s largest port. It has been redeveloped with skyscrapers set around the old water slips. We finish passing under the Thames to arrive at Greenwich.

Greenwich used to be the site of a Tudor Palace. After the English Civil War it was demolished and replaced with a retirement home for English sailors. In the 19th century it became the Royal Naval College. We are early so we grab a Cappuccino at McDonalds and try to walk around the buildings but there are lots of construction barriers for a music festival. A stage is set up in the gap facing the Thames.

At 10am we begin our tour of the Cutty Sark, the fastest ship in the world when it was built in 1869. It was so famous a Scotch Whisky was named after it. The hull was designed shallower and sleeker. The exterior planking was sheathed in a copper alloy to prevent barnacle growth allowing it to cut swiftly through the water.

Our tour starts in the holding deck where we learn about the tea that was stacked wall to wall. It would take only 72 days for the Cutty Sark to make the journey from China. Apparently that was fast.

We worked our way up past the Tween deck topside where we are met with three sail masts and a forest of rigging. Eleven miles of rope. Unlike earlier ships it had a small crew, as little as 19. They all slept in short wooden beds on this top deck. It was luxury compared to earlier times when sailors slept on swinging hammocks in the hold. It was still tough duty and sailors would often go AWOL in foreign ports. Cutty Sark’s trading advantage didn’t last long. When the Suez Canal opened shortly giving steamships a short cut of thousands of miles. Cutty Sark switched to trading wool from Australia.

Our tour finishes underneath the ship where we get a look at the sleek copper-sheathed hull. This dry dock area also has a museum of mast heads from other ships.

From the Cutty Sark we make our way through the Royal Naval College uphill. Or at least try to. We are stymied by the music festival barriers. We accidentally find the college chapel, St Peter and Paul. It is decorated with a nautical theme.

We then climb the hill to the Greenwich Observatory for our next timed entry. As the British fleet expanded around the world, navigation became critical. A major loss of one expedition on a reef prompted a royal contest to solve the Longitude Problem, i.e. knowing how far east or west you have travelled. An observatory was built on this hill away from the lights of London, to take careful measurements in the hope of using star charts. We start our tour in the Flamsteed House, named after the first Royal Astronomer. Atop his home is an Octagon Room where crude instruments were used to take measurements. A method of navigating using the transit of the moons of Jupiter was created but these measurements were almost impossible to take on a rolling ship.

Another building has a small museum on the Longitude Problem solution, an accurate clock. This allowed a sailor to compare Greenwich time to Local time allowing the navigator to know how far east and west he travelled. Prior clocks used pendulums which were inaccurate in rolling ships. The solution was a coiled spring. It had to be fitted with a mechanism to compensate for temperature swings and regular winding.

In 1883 an international conference was held in Washington DC to establish the Prime Meridian. Because England was so far ahead in this technology, Greenwich Time was made the standard. Aimee and I took our picture straddling this imaginary line that separates the eastern and western halves of the globe.

We return down the hill to the Royal Naval College and do a quick tour of the Queen’s House. It is now a naval art museum. It has a famous painting of Queen Elizabeth I. It also has a cool spiral staircase.

We eat lunch next door in the National Maritime Museum. Aimee and I both have soup. Afterwards we make a quick run through the museum. We start with the Admiral Nelson Hall. Aimee initially groans but I end up having to drag her out after she learns that this hero of the Battle of Trafalgar had lost his right arm in an earlier battle. On display is his uniform he wore when he died at Trafalgar. It has a hole in the left shoulder from the fatal bullet.

We speed through the rest of the museum. We are in overload mode. After two days of museums I have to do penance and allow Aimee some shopping time. We travel to Oxford Circus to visit the Liberty of London store. It is decorated in Mock Tudor style. Surprisingly this department store has a very large fabric section. It seems to be doing a very brisk business for upscale London.

As we were walking to the Tube station to return to our hotel, we passed a nice Pub selling Fish and Chips. I couldn’t pass it up so we stopped there for dinner. I washed it down with a classic English warm beer.