Portsmouth Historic Dockyard
The Historic Dockyard is part of the National Museum of the Royal Navy and contains many attractions, including HMS Victory, HMS Warrior 1860 and the Mary Rose Museum. There are other boats and museums all part of the dockyard and across the harbour at Gosport.
1661 - Pepy's visits the docks
April 2010, April 2011
Following the Restoration of Charles II, Samuel Pepys was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time and was rewarded with the position of Clerk to the Navy Board. This required him to visit the Royal Docks to inspect them, sort out the accounts and pay the men.
We portrayed Samuel visiting the docks as described in his diaries and tied it in with other activities on gun crews and ship navigation.
1536 - Refitting the Mary Rose, 1545 - The day before battle
Following the raising of the Mary Rose in 1982, it spent 25 years in a tent being sprayed to preserve it. The museum of artefacts found with the ship was in an different building to the current museum housing the ship and the collection.
Within the previous museum, there was a small area of re-created gun deck and we placed a variety of sailors and other men from the ship on the deck to interact with the visitors.
We created two scenarios for the times we were invited. One was setting the ship in dry dock while it was being refitted with all of the additional guns, and the second we set the ship the day before it set out in to the Battle of the Solent on its last sailing.
