Date: 2008-03-16
To: the maritime museum
Miles today: 0.0

Hi all,Been a busy boy of late, this time around in London I have enjoyed it so much more, think I am becoming a better traveller, and stopped comparing everything to home. Just accept things for what they are, or the culture shock has been minimised.Moved into a great backpackers, right opposite the the British Museum, super nice area, and some more great people in the rooms. Last night shared a room with a german and swede, and a canadian girl, we had a great night in chatting about all manner of things. A fascinating bunch of people. Tonight I have swapped room, and now have a kiwi girl to talk to, the girl at reception is from ballarat, and the night one is from new zealand to. London is full of people from our part of the world, I am just starting to discover how many.Yesterday had an awesome day, went to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. It is where the east and west parts of the hemishperes is devided. For a surveyor it is like the most important spot on the planet, our ground zero, literally. It also house the clocks built by Harrison, and they are stunning. The problem with navigation at sea was finding your longitude. Latitude was easy to find, just use a sextant and measure the angle of the sun in the sky at lunch time. As you move further north or south from the equator the sun gets lower in the sky, so it is relatively easy to calculate how far you are north or south of the equator, in other words calculate your latitude. Longitude is much harder, the royal observatory was created to map the heavens. Then once the stars were accurately mapped, tables could be used and mariners would observe the stars to calculate longitude, but it was such an involved process, and trying to make observations at night on a rolling ship and getting accurate results was almost impossible, you had to be a genius like Cook to even have a chance of getting it somewhere right.An easy way to calculate it was to know your local time, and to know the time at Greenwich. The earth does a full rotation in 24 hours, so if you divide 360 degrees by 24 you end up with 15 degrees, therefore 1 hour represents 15 degrees of latitude, or 1 degree is equal to 4 miutes, I think my maths there is correct, but anyway you get the idea. So if you know how far you are in time from greenwich then it is a simple matter of calculating your longitude. Problem was that there was no accurate time pieces that were capable of keeping time, particularly on a rolling rocking ship. The pendulum had been used to hold time for clocks in churches ect, but a pendulum is affected by the motion of the ship. Today we use a quartz watch, when you pass an electrical current through a piece of quartz it vibrates at a very accurate known rate, so it can be used to keep time. Back in harrisons day this was a bit more complicated, and eventually after making his 4th watch he had created a clock that could keep time at sea, it took him most of his lifetime to develop, and his first 3 examples H1, H2 and H3 are masterpieces in precision engineering, and put england at the forefront for centuries in making precision instruments for many scientific experiments. It is very exciting isnt it. I also went to the planetarium, and saw how black holes were created, you can start to understand maybe now why we surveyors have to do so much maths and physics and general sciences in our degrees, even the simplest things can be rather complicated. It was a brilliant museum, england has musuems which are the envy of the world, they have had so many brilliant people. The musuem holds the clocks of Harrison, it celbrates people like halley, the best astronomers, and it also celebrates its great explorers, who were the beneficiaries of these inventions. It is all stored in a building that was designed by one of the worlds great architects, Christopher Wren. THis is what you find in England the coming together of so many disciplines, and hence the museums are unlike anything else in the world. Today it was back off to Greenwich, it is located some distance just out of London down on the Thames, such a beautiful spot. I went to the former naval accademy, it is a very famous building and was at the heart of empire for a very long time, the buildings I recognised immediately. In many documentaires about Englands martimte past, these buildings alwasy feature, they are just down from the royal observatory which over looks them. Went in the painted hall, it is a large dinning hall that has alfrescoes in the celieng and walls, all designed by Wren, and also the chapel which is also gorgeous. Stunning buildings. The rest of the day was taken up with the Maritme museum, which ahs some amasing stuff, some great stuff on Nelson including the uniform he wore at the battle of Trafalgor where he died. The bullet wound in his blue tunic is very clear that punctured his lung and shattered his spine. There are some wonderful replica models of many of Englands and the worlds great ships. There was so much to see, and spent much of the afternoon looking around the displays and still had diffiuclty seeing everything. The amount of information was overwhelming. It is a place we could pick drop of Peter Webb, and come back and collect him in a few days time. Not sure what is in store for tomorrow, but if it is anything like the last two days then it will be awesome. London has recharged my batteries, the stuff here interests me so much. Unfortunately though there was a down side, the Cutty Sark is not on display, you may remember that it burnt down not that long ago, it was one of the famous tea clippers and it holds the record between Australia and London, I remember Peter talking about it often over the years, so it would have been great to see, it is also in Greenwich. England is so unlike the rest of the big town I have visited, as there is just so much to see, other big cities of Europe has its old city area and maybe a nice park if you are lucky, London has stuff spread all throughout its entire city area and including the outskirts. The tourists are spread all over the place, and it is such a beautiful city. THe transport system in Madrid is more modern and brand new, but riding the tube is riding a piece of history. it is the first underground, and still the worlds largest system, everything about it, including the map that displays it was a huge breakthrough. it is a rabbit warren of different tunnels that the consumer like me has to navigate around. Up these old steps, down another escalator, around another corner, it is very much an adventure. I worked out why the trains are so narrow, the system was built so long ago, the tunnels are all rather small, so the trains are as big as they possible can be. THe madrid system is faster, the tunnesl are bigger and the platforms are wider, all connected by escaltors, the consumer does not have to climb a single stairway, but it is not the tube. It does not have the history, the tube itself is a tourist attraction. As requested by a rather witty american I hsall endeavour to turn the camera around and picture myself a little more. There are a fair few pictures of me on amongst all the ones of the statues and other european monuments.