HMS Belfast

Received a healthy injection of naval heritage yesterday when I visited HMS Belfast, a restored WW2 and Korean War steel-hulled cruiser and floating museum run by the Imperial War Museum just down the way from London's tower bridge. According to the guidebook she's 'the only surviving example of the great fleets of big gun armoured warships built for the Royal Navy in the first half of the 20th century and the first ship to be preserved for the nation since Nelson's flagship, HMS Victory'. She was commissioned in 1939 and saw active service until 1965 and saved for the nation in 1971. Although it seems she did not make it to Bermuda being focussed on Arctic convoys, she was a major force in the North Atlantic and no doubt had connections to Bermuda-related activity. Just as you'd expect from a museum curator, I typically ignored the suggested tour route and badly navigated my way through her many decks, checking out her massive machinery and 6-inch turret guns on the upper decks from where Walrus sea planes were once offloaded for take off. Enjoyed the Madame Taussades-esque crew-life reconstructions (the tooth extraction going on in the dentist's cabin a highlight) and exhibits about her important participation in the D-Day landings at Normandy and destruction of the battle cruiser Scharnhorst. She's quite magnificent and it's easy to see why she costs £1000 a day to maintain.

Also visited the Design Museum which did little to impress with its esoteric eye-candy exhibits on graphic and industrial design, although a room full of 2D and 3D animation by Jamie Hewlett visual creator of Gorillaz was cool.