The Heritage Buddy

I stepped out of Portsmouth Harbour train station one freezing cold Saturday afternoon in January this year. I was slowly making my way to my hotel and stopped to admire how beautiful HMS Warrior looked against the winter sunset over the harbour, so I sat down on a bench to bring myself out of anxiety about getting lost, shutting down or dissociating and losing awareness of my surroundings and into the present. After a moment, I noticed an obelisk with HMS Royal Oak inscribed on it; I quickly learnt it was a memorial commemorating the 85th anniversary of the sinking of HMS Royal Oak. I knew I had to take some photos for some volunteering. (This memorial will be discussed in a future post - watch this space!) 😀 The reason I was visiting Portsmouth was because I am a board member at the National Museum of the Royal Navy and our board was encouraged to visit for branding reasons. After spending a couple of hours chilling in my hotel room by video-calling family to let them know ...

Today marks 85 years since the start of the Dunkirk evacuation! A group of restored ‘little ships’ escorted by the Royal Navy from Ramsgate have been reenacting the historic event by making the exact same journey. As well as having the Royal Navy involved with this rescue mission from the German advancement into France known as Operation Dynamo, ‘Little Ships’ were civilian vessels ranging from fishing trawlers to lifeboats to leisure yachts. Speaking of ‘little ships’, let me introduce you to a special someone: Meet Tamzine! She’s a little fishing boat built in Margate in 1937 and worked off the coast of Birchington that was involved in the Dunkirk evacuations. She was known as a local hero after being towed back from Dunkirk by a Belgian fishing boat and having a recognisable Viking-like stem, local boatmen took her back to her owner covered in blood, but luckily undamaged. Unfortunately for some ‘Little Ships’, some suffered shrapnel damage or were pierced by bullets. When I first s...