Sunderland
August 2, 2021
Sunderland - a sad place but a sunny ending.
It is always rather awkward when you ask a local "what is it like living here?" and they answer "I wish I didn't!" Maybe for the same reason, my request to meet the HM came to nothing, although his jolly port staff did try to make up for it....
Unbelievably, Sunderland was once the largest ship building port in the world. The first shipyard was opened in 1346 and over the next 650 years, 16,000 ships were built in 400 registered shipyards. WOW!
During 1846-54 Wearside produced almost one-third of all ships built in the UK. (Photo 3) But in 1988 the last shipyard closed and the sun went down over Sunderland's ship building industry.
Instead of meeting with the HM, Good Dog and her crew (made up from some old Operation Raleigh friends), decided to re-enact our time in Papua New Guinea and see how far up the River Wear we could get.... on a falling tide ... what could possibly go wrong?!
With no other traffic on the river, we went under the Wearmouth Bridge (photo 4), past The Stadium of Light football ground (photo 5), past a warehouse famous for illegal raves until the depth sounder was getting close to zero! It was then that Nigel and Steve from the port came to visit us on their rib (photo 6) and asked us what we were up to. I was expecting a telling off, but quite the opposite. They lead Good Dog on a guided tour of the port, showed us a boat doing its liferaft safety tests, explaining how Sunderland's own Lifeboat had started in 1800 (The RNLI started in 1824) and took us to where we could see their harbour dolphins playing. And as a great example of what The Seafarers' Charity supports, they explained how that morning they had transported a nun from the local Seafarers Mission who was taking sim cards out to foreign seafarers stranded at anchor outside the port.
So as photo 10 shows, we did return safely to our berth and Sunderland's sun did rise again to keep my crew happy!
It is always rather awkward when you ask a local "what is it like living here?" and they answer "I wish I didn't!" Maybe for the same reason, my request to meet the HM came to nothing, although his jolly port staff did try to make up for it....
Unbelievably, Sunderland was once the largest ship building port in the world. The first shipyard was opened in 1346 and over the next 650 years, 16,000 ships were built in 400 registered shipyards. WOW!
During 1846-54 Wearside produced almost one-third of all ships built in the UK. (Photo 3) But in 1988 the last shipyard closed and the sun went down over Sunderland's ship building industry.
Instead of meeting with the HM, Good Dog and her crew (made up from some old Operation Raleigh friends), decided to re-enact our time in Papua New Guinea and see how far up the River Wear we could get.... on a falling tide ... what could possibly go wrong?!
With no other traffic on the river, we went under the Wearmouth Bridge (photo 4), past The Stadium of Light football ground (photo 5), past a warehouse famous for illegal raves until the depth sounder was getting close to zero! It was then that Nigel and Steve from the port came to visit us on their rib (photo 6) and asked us what we were up to. I was expecting a telling off, but quite the opposite. They lead Good Dog on a guided tour of the port, showed us a boat doing its liferaft safety tests, explaining how Sunderland's own Lifeboat had started in 1800 (The RNLI started in 1824) and took us to where we could see their harbour dolphins playing. And as a great example of what The Seafarers' Charity supports, they explained how that morning they had transported a nun from the local Seafarers Mission who was taking sim cards out to foreign seafarers stranded at anchor outside the port.
So as photo 10 shows, we did return safely to our berth and Sunderland's sun did rise again to keep my crew happy!