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Waking The Dead

I am wrenched from an uneasy sleep by the sound of screaming. A piercing metallic shriek indicating a train is trying to drag its inflexible wheels around an over-optimistically tight curve. It is 7.26 and the heat is already rising in the city below, invading my cheap hotel room on the eleventh floor. The window opens but not enough to make the air move, only let in the inexorable heat. While walking the streets the night before in search of food, dripping sweat in the endless swelter, I was aware of the difference of this place to other cities, even other ports I am more familiar with. I lived in Southampton for a while which seems barely aware it is a port at all. Here, all roads lead to the docks as if there is no other place you might want to go. I’ve spent time in Cardiff, a different country but mostly the same language. Here, every group of people passing by speaks another tongue I do not recognise.

In the mall, filled with chain stores and franchises that are recognisable across half the globe I heard some men greet each other in German. I smiled as I was suddenly reminded of Hamburg where I played many gigs and once recorded an album. The squealing trains also remind me of Germany, but this time of the Old East where the screech of trams often echoed through the cobbled streets regardless of the hour. The clear blue sky, merciless sun and long, hot evenings are more in keeping with southern Italy though. This is not weather for a ginger from Devon. I’m a long way from home and I feel it.

As the grinding wheels and the railway tracks sing their tortured song once more I pull back the single sheet under which I had attempted to slumber, cross to the window and push it shut. I stop and look out on this unfamiliar city that will be my home for the next four days and much of the next two months. Assorted clock and church towers rise up out of the purposeful victorian-colonial brick architecture, amongst assured modern skyscrapers fashioned from white curves and blue tinted glass. As they take turns to chime the half hour my eye is caught by movement. On the water, about a mile away, the Isle of Wight ferry is chugging off towards Ryde.

Yes, I’m in Portsmouth. I’m now officially “Consultant Storyteller to the National Museum of the Royal Navy”, employed to research and create a suite of stories for HMS Warrior, do some performances then train the staff in the telling of them.


HMS Warrior was “the first Ironclad”. In 1861, with her metal hull, a steam powered propellor and fearsome complement of massive cannons, she was the most powerful, cutting edge, modern, heavily armoured vessel on the sea. This is serious history! My job this week is to read everything written about the Warrior and read everything ever written by anyone who served on or was involved in building her, and read everything written about anyone who ever served on or was involved in building her… In four days.

The sun beats down on this strange city. Soon I must make my way through the parched grass of Victoria Park and follow the roads to the only place they go, down to the dockyards where the long dead crew of a once great vessel are waiting for me to find them and bring them back to life. I momentarily see my reflection in the hotel window. I’m smiling: It’s time to go to work.


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