This is the working end of a ship in the dry dock of Gloucester Docks where I had an afternoon out the other day. It’s worth a trip if your in the area. I like Gloucester, used to live there and miss it’s friendly atmosphere and the rough edges. This place is a gem and is Tommy Nielson’s boat yard in the docks. They are in the middle of a complete refit of the tall ship Kaskelot which is also being renamed to some strange Scandinavian name. It’s one of the largest tall ships around these days and you can see from this image what they have to do to refit the below water levels. Rope or perhaps it’s hemp ( I’m no expert on these things, just an onlooker ) is hammered between the wooden boards. No doubt it is then tarred to make it watertight. There’s no automatic way of doing this so the men working on the ship just have to hammer away.

Whilst I was there I also saw a couple of the men working on the chains, which seemed to just be getting a couple of hammers and bashing them. Together with the blokes doing the ship’s sides they made for quite a syncopated sound. Take a look at my little movie of the scene. I’m at a loss to know what they were doing to the chains. Perhaps they were trying out “Unchained Melody”

To those of you who might be wondering what happened to my two border guards series, then please forgive me, they have taken a short break but will be back in the next posting hopefully.