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| All pictures are the copyright of Alan O. Watkins, or are (where stated) from the Alan O. Watkins Collection. |
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I live in Medway, on the River Medway, and if you believe the stories, my house is on a mudflat.
This collection has stemmed from a long interest in ships - and postcard collecting. When I moved to Kent, and got a job in Gravesend, my office was a few yards from the River Thames. Just across the river were Tilbury, its ancient fort, and its modern port.
Ships still plough up and down the river, though not in the quantities that once they did.
These days I work right on the bank of the Medway. The former Dart paddlesteamer Kingswear Castle regularly flip-flops past. Its coal-generated, steam-fed wheels are driven by a boiler that was 100 years old in 2004 which pushes it upstream from Thunderbolt Pier to Rochester before she heads down river to the Victorian forts of Darnet and Hoo.
The river is quiet these days. It is likely to get quieter as the Thames Gateway brings more waterfront homes to places where the last working wharfs were still in use at the beginning of 2004.
But it was home to the Royal Navy for 400 years. Chatham's Royal Dockyard may now be a museum but it has plenty of interest.
The Royal Navy has left HMS Pembroke, its shore base, but the memories live on in The Historic Dockyard - and in the St George's Centre. Its memorials tell of men lost at sea in accidents, of crews wiped out in a matter of seconds, ships that fought against insurmountable odds but gained a place in history as they went down with all guns firing, and of the submarines that sometimes disappeared below the waves - and never surfaced again.
The Pembroke buildings are now home to the Medway campus of the University of Greenwich, so the teaching still continues.
St Mary's Island has been cleared of centuries of pollution and is now a thriving residential community.
Ramble through the collections that I am always updating.
There's historic stuff from my collection, visits to the dockyard and its three ships, plenty of riverside hulks, views of the fascinating craft that have become leisure boats, the tramps that still work the rivers, the tugs, the preserved, the tall ships, the ......
No - you have a look, why don't you? |
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| Hits (today): | 17 |
| Hits (this week): | 49 |
| Hits (this month): | 443 |
| Hits (this year): | 6534 |
| Hits (all-time): | 45709 |
| Collections: | 60 |
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