Wednesday 30 January Maritime Museum

SS James Craig

SS Endeavour

Camomile had told us the Maritime Museum was worth a visit and to allow plenty of time. There's so much to see and do we allowed four hours and still had to be asked to leave not for bad behaviour but because the museum was closing for the day. The main galleries are free entry on the first Thursday of the month so if we have time we'll return to finish off what we didn't have time to see today.

What took us four hours apart from stopping to chat to the volunteer guides? First we visited the restored schooner James Craig, a full functioning training ship which took part in the tall ships race on Australia Day. We were lucky to be allowed on as she was making final preparations to leave tomorrow to sail to Hobart.

HMAS Vampire

The Endeavour, a modern copy of Captain Cook's ship was on the dock too. She's a comparatively small boat if one considers Cook her around the world, including Capes Good Hope and Horn, three times. The original ship was a collier which plied between Whitby and London, a blunt bowed boat sent on a private scientific expedition, not Royal Navy, to map coastlines, to chart new lands, record flora and fauna and to discover if the rumours of a great land in the southern ocean were. As we know now, it was. Captain Cook landed at Botany Bay on 26 Jan, 1888 and claimed the colony for Britain. One small ship, 60 crewmen, a talented Captain from Yorkshire, a Union Flag and the biggest island in the world was claimed as an outpost of one of the geographically smallest nations. A small oversight that no-one asked the Aboriginal people if they had any objections to being discovered.

pirates at 4 o'clock!

The Endeavour was modified for Cook's expedition, turning the below decks from cargo holds into crew quarters, the fore part for the deck hands and the aft section divided horizontally to give two levels for the officers, medics and scientists, the lower with 4' head room throughout and the upper with a more generous 5'. I'm not big and I couldn't stand up. Captain Cook was 6'2” and must have hit his head many times.

From the historical to the modern for our next encounter, submarine Onslow. I've never been in a sub before and while it looks big from the outside, inside it is crammed with equipment, instruments, paraphernalia and the tiny personal spaces for the 68 crew she carried. One of the volunteers guiding was a chef on her and he gave fascinating insight into life aboard – a one minute shower once a week, the smell of diesel in everything. After a tour all clothing and bedding was taken away and new issued to all men and he said his skin would still smell of diesel two weeks after disembarking. Not a place for the claustrophobic. David was having a great time in the torpedo room and trying out the periscope.

Admiral on the bridge

The last ship of the day to see was destroyer HMAS Vampire with guns and the greatest personal space for her 320 crew.

With only 30 minutes until the museum closed we did a superfast tour of the inside galleries and you could easily spend 2 hours just in this section. There is a lot to see. We missed some of the inside displays and another half a dozen historical boats on the pontoons outside. These are free to visit so we could pop in on another day.