Dartmouth, England
Our first day ashore was spent among the warm-hearted community of the historic town of Dartmouth. We started with a visit to the medieval parish church, St Saviours, where we were welcomed by the Vicar. This charming church is dominated by a magnificent pre-Reformation rood screen, a rare survival that escaped destruction during the English civil war in the 17th-century.
Afterwards, we were received in the Victorian Guildhall by the town’s mayor, town crier and other dignitaries, where we were shown the town’s greatly valued regalia of four silver maces and precious chains of office. The morning finished with a guided walk around the lanes and lovely period houses of Dartmouth, some of which date back to the 14th-century, and a chance to hear about the town’s distinguished maritime connections over many centuries. Not least was the story of one of the town’s most famous sons, John Hawley, a merchant and buccaneer, who became immortalized in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales as the ‘Shipman’ of Dartmouth.
The mouth of the River Dart has been protected since John Hawley’s time by a series of fortifications, and having seen them to such advantage on our approach to Dartmouth, we now had the opportunity to visit them on foot. The ingenious strategy of stretching a chain across the estuary to consternate enemy sailing ships approaching Dartmouth was backed up by attack from the adjacent gun platforms at the Old Castle. As a further precaution, Bayards Cove fort provided a second line of defense from about 1509. Further gun emplacements were developed at the Old Battery between the 16th and 20th centuries. Our visit coincided with the celebration of Queen Elizabeth’s golden jubilee, so we were privileged to witness the gun salute, using a rifle muzzle loader cannon of 1874 capable of firing projectiles for over two miles, carried out by the specially trained Portsdown Artillery Volunteers (see photo). The nearby church of St Petrox, originally a 6th-century Celtic foundation and still lit only by candlelight, featured a flower festival, and in the town the afternoon finished with a street party and roast pig. It was a day of tradition, pageant and celebration in the prettiest of English settings.
Our first day ashore was spent among the warm-hearted community of the historic town of Dartmouth. We started with a visit to the medieval parish church, St Saviours, where we were welcomed by the Vicar. This charming church is dominated by a magnificent pre-Reformation rood screen, a rare survival that escaped destruction during the English civil war in the 17th-century.
Afterwards, we were received in the Victorian Guildhall by the town’s mayor, town crier and other dignitaries, where we were shown the town’s greatly valued regalia of four silver maces and precious chains of office. The morning finished with a guided walk around the lanes and lovely period houses of Dartmouth, some of which date back to the 14th-century, and a chance to hear about the town’s distinguished maritime connections over many centuries. Not least was the story of one of the town’s most famous sons, John Hawley, a merchant and buccaneer, who became immortalized in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales as the ‘Shipman’ of Dartmouth.
The mouth of the River Dart has been protected since John Hawley’s time by a series of fortifications, and having seen them to such advantage on our approach to Dartmouth, we now had the opportunity to visit them on foot. The ingenious strategy of stretching a chain across the estuary to consternate enemy sailing ships approaching Dartmouth was backed up by attack from the adjacent gun platforms at the Old Castle. As a further precaution, Bayards Cove fort provided a second line of defense from about 1509. Further gun emplacements were developed at the Old Battery between the 16th and 20th centuries. Our visit coincided with the celebration of Queen Elizabeth’s golden jubilee, so we were privileged to witness the gun salute, using a rifle muzzle loader cannon of 1874 capable of firing projectiles for over two miles, carried out by the specially trained Portsdown Artillery Volunteers (see photo). The nearby church of St Petrox, originally a 6th-century Celtic foundation and still lit only by candlelight, featured a flower festival, and in the town the afternoon finished with a street party and roast pig. It was a day of tradition, pageant and celebration in the prettiest of English settings.
