Old wreck beside the M275 near Port Solent

[Greenheart]

A year or so back I watched a Youtube video showing the decaying unfinished replica of George V's Britannia, up in the north of Portsmouth Harbour. I hadn't realised she wasn't still off Hythe. I can't see Britannia anywhere in Portsmouth Harbour on Google Maps satellite or aerial view, currently. Has she been moved again?

While looking at the aerial imagery, I noticed on Streetview a very far-gone wooden wreck a few yards west from the M275, just north of the bridge at Hilsea...

Older Streetview pics from 15 years earlier than the latest (2023) show this vessel less hopelessly deteriorated...

Does anybody remember what she was?
.

 

[Poignard]

Looks like one of the once numerous 50ft MFVs the Royal Navy used to have for carrying men and small stores around the harbour.

I remember using the RN ferry service between HMS Dolphin and HMS Vernon when I was training at Dolphin and living in married quarters at Hilsea during the 1950s. That used an MFV.

 

[Mark-1]

Can't help with the questions but there's a youtube vid of someone exploring the metal ship behind.

 

[LittleSister]

Looks like one of the once numerous 50ft MFVs the Royal Navy used to have for carrying men and small stores around the harbour.

I remember using the RN ferry service between HMS Dolphin and HMS Vernon when I was training at Dolphin and living in married quarters at Hilsea during the 1950s. That used an MFV.

My first ever experience of cruising (or even sleeping afloat) was on Navy MFV circa 1966 with the Sea Cadets. A formative experience! Mysteriously, I can still remember that it was MFV No. 1060.

My shaky impression is that it would have been a bit shorter than that one. It certainly had more steel superstructure. There was an open flybridge above the bridge, which would itself have been higher than that one as it faced over superstructure ahead of it that was high enough to have doors - galley to starboard, heads to port IIRC. Somewhere (below decks?) there was accommodation for the maybe 8 or so of us Cadets, perhaps 2 or 3 officers/staff. I don't think it had a mast that tall.

We cruised around the Solent from Portsmouth in fair weather and foul for about 5 days. I can still remember the sunshine glinting on a window on the IoW (somewhere around Ryde?) as we crossed towards somewhere further west on the island.

Yarmouth is the only place I can positively remember visiting, though its was dark and we never saw the town itself, and was probably the only time in the trip we came to the shore. We tied up on the end of a pier there for the night in strong wind and rain, and some of the bigger, braver (more foolhardy?) lads leapt the gap onto a ladder on the pier as the MFV heaved up and down on the swell, but I chickened out. It seemed very risky to me, and rather pointless just to be on the pier in the rain for a few minutes.

Pumping the bilges, by means of manual stirrup pumps accessed through small plates in the deck, was very tedious and hard work, and required doing daily (several times a day?).

I've numerous memories of it, including -
- steering, on the wood-panelled enclosed bridge, under the supervision of an older and experienced lad, struggling to keep the compass aligned with the heading commanded down the speaking tube by the officers on the flybridge;
- standing in the bow in the rain on 'look out', and when at last I saw something to report - a big log floating ahead - unable to alert the officers on the flybridge over the noise of the engine and weather despite screaming at the top of my lungs;
- peeling spuds by night on the side deck outside the galley;
- waiting for the train home on an island platform and having to hold onto to a lamppost to stop myself falling over as the platform seemed to be rolling even more than the MFV had been!

 

[Poignard]

 

[LittleSister]

View attachment 204937

That could have been it! Certainly very much that sort of thing (though there were far fewer of us aboard, as I remember it). Thank you.

(Typo in my post above, it was MFV 1060 I was on. Maybe brain fade rather than typo, 1960 (as I originally wrote) was the sail number of my first boat (apart from a canoe), a 1956/7-ish(?) Firefly sailing dinghy I bought late 80s.)

 

[creeks]

A year or so back I watched a Youtube video showing the decaying unfinished replica of George V's Britannia, up in the north of Portsmouth Harbour. I hadn't realised she wasn't still off Hythe. I can't see Britannia anywhere in Portsmouth Harbour on Google Maps satellite or aerial view, currently. Has she been moved again?

Google seems to think that the K1 Brittania charity shop in Cowes is still in existence and gives the phone number as 01983 241898. I found them very happy to talk about the project when I called in there a couple of years ago enquiring about her whereabouts when she went missing from Hythe. I seem to remember being told that she would never sail as the hull was not strong enough to take a rig. This is her off Hythe:

 

[Fantasie 19]

A year or so back I watched a Youtube video showing the decaying unfinished replica of George V's Britannia, up in the north of Portsmouth Harbour. I hadn't realised she wasn't still off Hythe. I can't see Britannia anywhere in Portsmouth Harbour on Google Maps satellite or aerial view, currently. Has she been moved again?

That's her...

 

[Rappey]

1.1 miles from me. Hmmm? Having problems adding the pic i just took