Chatham - Day 92

Chatham - Thursday 11th August 2011 - Day 92

No.1 Smithery Main Exhibition Hall

Today there is too much wind so aborted sailing.  I went back to the Dockyard Museum to see the exhibits which I had missed the previous day. These were housed in the No.1 Smithery, this is where they used to make the anchors, chains and bend the plates for making the ships.  One section has all different kinds of ship's models which are of very high standard along with a large collection of paintings. 

Titanic costumes

Another part of the Smithery houses their latest exhibition which is the history of the loss of the Titanic.  Shown are the costumes worn during the making of the film worn by Kate Winslett and Daniel Di Caprio.  There are a lot of artifacts from her sistership Olympic which depict how they travelled across the Atlantic in the 1910/20's, with accompanying film of these events.
There is a full listing of the Titanics crew and which ones survived.  The outcome of the enquires after the accident is well documented and the whole exhibition brings out the feelings of the people affected by this tragedy.

The necklace on display which is very much a part of the film.  The rest of the afternoon I toured around the site and had a picnic in the Dockyard Commissioner's Garden which was a very quiet and lovely spot.  On leaving the Dockyard I went to the marina shopping complex which has large outlets and appeared to be very busy.

For the night we caught the No.141 bus from the marina to Chatham bus station and had a half an hour wait for a No.151 to take us to Rochester, another 15 minutes ride away.  We went into the first pub the Eagle where a three man band called The Grandads were playing. They were very good so we stayed there for and hour before we had to catch the last bus back to the marina, where we finished off in our local the Sails and Trade.  By the time we got back on board the wind was beginning to drop.