LONGITUDE 0

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 120, 23 May 1941, Page 6

LONGITUDE 0

ROYAL GREENWICH

ITS STATELY HOSPITAL

"LIQUID HISTORY"

(By G. 0.)

It was John Burns, the Labour stalwart and subsequently Minister of the Crown, who originated the description oi the Thames as "liquid history," an 3pt and happy phrase. The river has certainly played a great part in English, indeed in Imperial, history. Prehistoric peoples made their way along its sedgy, marshy banks, ancient Britons navigated it in their coracles, Romans founded the city of Londinium on its shores, Queen Elizabeth was born at Greenwich, and it was at Tilbury, in times like these, that she inspired her army. Royal barges with music playing and flags waving passed between London and Greenwich, and in much later periods statesmen met at Greenwich to discuss politics and eat whitebait. But the astronomical importance of Greenwich transcends all the romance, comedy, and tragedy associated with this ancient borough by the river. Here, at the Royal Observatory—for which the world has to thank the Merry Monarch—the time of the world is set; here is Longitude 0. Speaking loosely New Zealand is the farthest land from Greenwich, for the East Cape of the North Island is roughly 179deg E., and one has only to reach 180deg E. to be on the way back again to Greenwich from which one set out. The Observatory, for all that its services were for all nations in the matter of time, was not spared by the Hun.

Now his fierce fury is turned on Greenwich itself and the Dreadnought Hospital has been hit and patients evacuated by nurses. The name of this institution was taken over from a great three-decker hulk which had been H.M.S. Dreadnought. Dismasted and moored in the river at Greenwich, she was long used as a hospital for sick and injured seamen. The hospital of the name stands in the grounds of, or adjoining, the Royal Naval Hospital, a very different institution, which is the glory of Greenwich and yet another of Wren's master works — in association with Vanbrough. No doubt Wren himself had something to say about the domes above the Chapel and the Painted Hall, for they are as impressive and of the same form, but not so large, as the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral. The hospital is a stately block of buildings in Portland stone, richly embellished with sculpture, mellowed by time, and abounding in subtleties of light and shade. The least, observant person on seeing the Royal Naval Hospital from the river or the Observatory on the hill cannot fail to be struck by its beauty and dignity. The origin of the Hospital, expressed crudely and inexactly, was on this wise:— Queen Mary, to William III: It is all very well, William, for that baggage Nell Gwynne to have had a hospital built at Chelsea for her old soldiers, but what about the sailors of our Royal Navy? William: What about them? Mary: Surely they, too. have fought our. country's enemies—and beaten them, too; but they have also had to battle against tempests and suffer shipwreck. They should and must have their hospital, too, as well as the soldiers. William: Have it your own way. It is to Queen Mary II that the building of Greenwich Royal Naval Hospital is generally attributed. While the Chelsea pensioners lived (until bombed out) in their hospital, the naval pensioners vacated Greenwich as far back as 1865. Today its stony quadrangles and ways are silent except for the footfalls of visitors to the Chapel or the Painted Hall, or Nautical Museum, and of official persons and policemen going about their business there. The Hospital stands fronting the river down which the Golden Hind drifted, bound out for the Spanish Main; down which, too. sailed Frobisher on his way to the Indies, if he could find it by a north-west passage; the Erebus and Terror passed that, way to the Antarctic; and, on the opposite side of the river, the Great Eastern, the mammoth ship of her day. or ship before her time, was launched, or, rather, at first, refused to take the water and so remained on the stocks for a long time before she was set iafToat. Up the river on the flood, past Greenwich Hospital, came ice ships from Norway (with windmills abaft the main mast), but they ceased with the advance of refrigeration; sea-worn and weary ships from Australia and New Zealand, sails all neatly furled, but hulls shabby .and dull, were towed past the Hospital to the docks.) They looked very tired, after their long Homeward passage round (as Masefield says)

Cape Horn that tramples beauty into wreck And crumples steel and smites the strong man dumb.

Swift paddle excursion steamers passed that way, too, in the summertime, and that with sounds of music, popping of corks, and of crowds of people in a general air of gaiety. Passing Greenwich, too, only a year age, was part of what has been called the "fantastic armada," made up of craft of every sort, anything, in fact that would float and carry men, all bound for Dunkirk on very urgent and dangerous business. Some of the men who went in these vessels to the coast of France never returned to see the domes of Greenwich Hospital. But they did their job.

For all the blitz, red-sailed barges will still sail by Greenwich, in short tacks, making all they can out of the tides; furious tugs will churn the olivetinted waters of the river into froth. Bombs may shower down as they may over Thames and its estuary, but the traffic of the great—yet small —river will go on, even though the factories and storehouses on its banks be blazing. Royal and ancient Greenwich in its bight or loop of the river will not be effaced even though its precious gem in the Royal Hospital should be destroyed; though the great gasometers and power works, covering ground where pirates used to be hanged in chains and left to rot on the gibbets, should be blown from the earth.