UK Tourist & Leisure Attractions - HMS Belfast

HMS Belfast was a famous battleship in WWII and remained in service for many years afterwards too.  Now at a permanent mooring on the River Thames near Tower Bridge, it is now a floating museum run by the Imperial War Museum.

It was fairly windy up there on HMS Belfast's forward deck, perhaps a little taster of what the sailors had to endure when out at sea.  Except the Thames is probably a lot calmer than the open sea, of course!  And the ship was stationary.

Looking back from the forward deck is the 'A' and 'B' gun Turret on HMS Belfast.  Well, we certainly wouldn't like to be on the receiving end of that lot!  They must have been pretty noisy when fired too.

Now Bob, use your rear view mirror and remember to indicate when pulling out!  It all looked a bit sparse; we expected masses of levers, knobs and switches on the battleship's bridge.  And no CD radio/MP3 dock?

Watch out Mike, enemy at 2 o'clock!  The boys had great fun swinging the warship's gun around; mind you it took ages to move on account of the low gearing, by the time the enemy would have been lined up they'd probably have fired first!

Here's a picture of Belinda flashing!  It's a large searchlight with a shutter that's operated to signal to the allies in Morse Code during battle.  We wondered if it could also be used to dazzle the enemy when they're trying to fire at you.

Ahoy there, Captain Birdseye!  Oh, it's Mike keeping a sharp lookout on the other bridge on HMS Belfast.  This looked like the bridge where they did the navigation - no computers or GPS in those days of course, just charts, rulers and the phone to ring and ask "are we there yet"?

Now here's the Belfast's wireless equipment room with a sailor technician repairing the kit.  Just look at the size of those old fashioned racks!  It must have been hard to work here with just that red light though.  This area was well into the bowels of the warship, to protect it from damage during battle.

Also below decks we looked around HMS Belfast's boiler and engine room - and you thought computers were complicated!  Everywhere was a mass of gantries, pipes, gauges, boilers, gears and levers; a real plumber's nightmare!

Here's the control station for monitoring the ship's engine, again all very complicated looking, and Bob thought his car was complicated!  Now, how do you switch on the air conditioning in HMS Belfast?  Er, NO! - don't press that big red butt....

Sleeping over your eating quarters means you can just drop in for breakfast!  However, eating under a sea-sick or hung over sailor probably doesn't appeal, maybe they just tied them up in their hammocks like they've done in this picture!  HMS Belfast could accommodate up to 950 sailors.

HMS Belfast's Shell and Magazine room lies well below the waterline and is protected by heavy armour, which is just as well as the consequences of that lot going up just doesn't bear thinking about!  The shells were transported up to the guns above by those silver tubes behind them.

It was getting dark when we finally left HMS Belfast, turning back to take one last look (and photo).  The WWII battleship remained in service well into the 60s and entrance to this historic floating museum cost £9.50 on our visit.

We spent an interesting afternoon exploring HMS Belfast, it was a fascinating warship and well worth visiting, even for non-battleship geeks like us!
As a branch of the Imperial War Museum the ship hosts various special events throughout the year and runs educational workshops.  Various conservation projects may mean that parts of the historic battleship are closed to visitors at times.

Don't forget to check out the HMS Belfast website and other London tourist sites on our UK tourist links page.

We also have some videos of our visit to the battleship, accessed from our video clips page.