Passing inshore of Horse Sand Fort

l'escargot said:
There is a good picture here
Click to expand...

To give some scale to L'escargots picture and having dived the barrier, those concrete blocks are about the size of a large ford transit van with a similar sized gap in between. Sailing between them at low water would be an interesting variation of Russian Roulette.

Pete
 
The barrier used to be much more obvious. There were large wooden stakes fixed into the concrete blocks. These extended many feet above the HW level. Over the years many vanished but they were still a warning. Some bright spark decided to remove those that remained and so we are left with lots of big concrete blocks as seen in the very good photo. You may get away with it outside the mid passage but why take the chance ?
 
The blocks from the Southsea end at 17:15 this evening.

teef01.jpg
 
Re. 'Anti Submarine barrier', it surely was.

Note midget subs' such as the WWII 'X craft', and the '2 man Chariots' invented by the Italians then copied by the Germans & British.

More recently just one example of survelliance subs' was the Russian craft running on caterpillar tracks on the seabed...

HMS Vernon, the development & training establishment at Portsmouth, developed a great many anti-submarine barriers & countermeasures from Victorian times to quite recently;

a very good book is 'The Torpedomen, HMS Vernon's story 1872 - 1986' by

Rear Admiral E N Poland CB CBE
 
What you can see from my pic is that the blocks were quite exposed all the way out to the north side of the main gap. What you can't see is that they were beginning to be exposed to the south side as well which I have not seen for a while.
 
Seajet said:
Re. 'Anti Submarine barrier', it surely was.

Note midget subs' such as the WWII 'X craft', and the '2 man Chariots' invented by the Italians then copied by the Germans & British.

More recently just one example of survelliance subs' was the Russian craft running on caterpillar tracks on the seabed...

HMS Vernon, the development & training establishment at Portsmouth, developed a great many anti-submarine barriers & countermeasures from Victorian times to quite recently;

a very good book is 'The Torpedomen, HMS Vernon's story 1872 - 1986' by

Rear Admiral E N Poland CB CBE
Click to expand...

They must have had a crystal ball then - the blocks were put there in 1909. :)

http://h2g2.com/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A83249319
 
Try reading the book to see all the variations of hanging chains, booms & explosives etc tried, before the concrete jobs; small German submarines proved quite annoylingly effective in WW 1, and HMS Vernon let alone the dockyard was a prime target.
 
l'escargot said:
They must have had a crystal ball then - the blocks were put there in 1909. :)

http://h2g2.com/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A83249319
Click to expand...

Rather anachronistic. As early as 1864, the Confederate States Ship Hunley, a submarine, not only sailed, but even managed to sink a Yankee Screw Sloop, during the American Civil War. Submarines were pretty well developed by 1909, which was 45 years later.
 
Dockhead said:
Rather anachronistic. As early as 1864, the Confederate States Ship Hunley, a submarine, not only sailed, but even managed to sink a Yankee Screw Sloop, during the American Civil War. Submarines were pretty well developed by 1909, which was 45 years later.
Click to expand...

But hadn't developed as far as the "...midget subs' such as the WWII 'X craft', and the '2 man Chariots' invented by the Italians then copied by the Germans & British." that the OP was claiming that the blocks were put in place to defend against. They also mostly stand in less than 6 metres of water at high tide and up to 2 metres at low tide. The defences to the land on both sides of the Solent were to push all vessels between the forts where they could be monitored and dealt with as necessary.
 
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On our way back from Pompy to Langstone today we did witness a quite large yacht sail straight over the barrier between the main gap and the inner gap. It was half an hour after HW so he either did or did not know about it.:eek: I still went out through the main gap. :o
 
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Giblets,

it's a sight you'll sadly get used to !

When seeing someone approaching the barrier not a gap it's sometimes difficult to know if calling them - if name or number are visible - would help or just cause more confusion.

I use the Dolphin passage almost every time as it's usually on route Chi - West and avoids the sometimes lumpy waves + ambiguous shipping movements of going between the forts, usually not so good a wind angle there either.

Having Channel 11 -as you Giblets know well to be QHM - Queens Harbour Master Portmouth - is an extremely good idea so one is warned of big marine traffic; the dash across the Portsmouth entrance channel seems narrow, unless a hooting great ferry powering up to warp speed is approaching !
 
I heard a yacht calling for assistance to be removed from the barrier and it was a visiting Frenchman. At the time I couldn't help thinking that that was kind of what the barrier was made for. :)
 
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