The museum at Gosport provides an opportunity to observe how submarines are constructed as well as about the lives of the crews who manned them. It occupies the site of HMS Dolphin, the training centre on land for the Royal Navy’s submariners for more than a century. It is part of the National Museum of the Royal Navy and also of the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard group, and is linked with the Dockyard and with Victory, Warrior and Mary Rose, by a water bus that plies the short distance across the mouth of Portsmouth Harbour. The centrepiece of the museum is HMS Alliance, a submarine of the Second World War. During a 45-minute tour visitors can see the ship’s periscopes, its torpedo store, its galley, its escape hatches and its crew’s cramped living quarters. The Holland I was the Royal Navy’s first submarine, built to an American design at Barrow-in-Furness in 1901, she sank en route for scrapping in 1913, but was raised from the sea in 1981-82, and is now displayed in a controlled atmosphere. The museum also displays X24, a 16 m long mini submarine of the Second World War, and an even smaller German mini-submarine of the same period, which had a crew of just one man. Displays also include photographs, plans of ships, documents and artefacts relating to submarines, and there is an area of remembrance for submariners lost at sea.
Royal Navy Submarine Museum Gosport
Walpole Road
PO12 1NS Gosport
Hampshire
United Kingdom
+44 (0) 23 - 92510354
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