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Sorry about that… anyway, after “sailing” around Portsmouth harbour, complete with two aircraft carriers and mines awaiting detonation, (one went off) it was time for Wellington’s Future Maritime Engineers team to do a bit of boat building. In paper. In fact, as Warsash Maritime Academy’s Head of Engineering Jonathan Ridley assured us, paper’s just the ticket for the job. The job being to create vessels to use in the trials tank at the Academy – the next exercise for the students. The properties that such funny hat boats would have, being suitable for experimental work in the heart of the building – kind of a miniature seaway in Southampton Solent’s part of the city’s university district. This was less easy than the words I’ve used to describe it. It’s fair to say some boats were more boaty than others, but who’s quibbling…

Confusingly, Future Maritime Engineers’ first port of call, Warsash Maritime Academy, isn’t actually in Warsash, on the Solent, where it has been for many years. With accommodation and space in mind, the Academy found a new home near Southampton’s Solent University. Warsash retains offshore and firefighting facilities on site, but new bridge simulators – funded by the late Sir Donald Gosling – were created at Solent itself, to accompany a testing tank and classrooms. But those simulators! The one the students used – with panoramic computer graphics recreating Portsmouth harbour, and a modern ship’s bridge responding to helm and engine orders, was a wild experience. As each student “drove” the “ship”, across wakes and rough(ish) water, the “ship” “heeled” in response. So did you, before you realized you were actually standing on a solid concrete floor, and your brain was being bamboozled!

So where to go with the students involved in HMS Wellington’s Future Maritime Engineers project? FME leader Rebecca Swan rolled up her sleeves and hit the phones and e-mail. Her aim was simple to understand, but not easy to achieve: to show the wide range of maritime engineering available for careers here, no matter that the UK is no longer so big in actual ship-owning and construction (though even as recently as the 1950’s Britain was still building around half the world’s ships!) The course would need to be energizing, informative, and most importantly, fun for the students. And the visits would need to encompass both the Royal and Merchant navies. A tall order indeed, but Rebecca is used to that. An early call was to Warsash Maritime Academy with its state-of-the art facilities. Answer: yes, bring ’em on!

This (picture) is Rebecca Swan, Education Consultant and Education Development Officer for The Wellington Trust. First, come up with a stream of visits that would really “float the boat” (sorry…) of those taking part. One good decision out of that was to select young students who had already shown an interest in technology. Randomizing or picking attendees whose mindset was in a diametrically opposite direction to try and shift them (as in so-called “Reality” TV shows) was a non-starter – quite rightly. So – a selection of young people who’d already started working on technical studies was sought form two London colleges. Step ! Rebecca’s next task was to seek the support of those in the maritime sector who would endorse her plans. Key to her plan was showing that from autonomous ships to advanced weapons systems, maritime engineering is cutting edge.

…was taken in HMS Wellington, home of the Wellington Trust, at her moorings on the Thames Embankment – the Victoria Embankment, in fact – opposite London’s Temple underground station. On board the students find themselves touching history – on these very decks the Battle of the Atlantic, the longest campaign by far in the Second World War, was fought and with enormous Allied effort, brought to victory. Not without terrible cost on both sides. Among the Allies’ Merchant Navy officers and men. Among the convoy escorts, shepherded by ships just like Wellington, with her coming through at last: British, Canadian and American, and Free seamen of all nations facing down Nazism. Without ships like ‘Wellington’, Hitler’s U-boats would have strangled our country and starved it to death; and we would now be a crushed, Gestapo-tormented satellite of the degraded and evil Third Reich.

The aim of the Wellington Trust’s Future Maritime Engineers project was to assemble a programme of visits for young technology students that would energize them into thinking about a career in maritime engineering. Maritime Films UK’s role was to capture the whole process on the run, creating a film to spread the word about the many benefits of working in the maritime engineering sector. For this, the Trust won funding from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 (picture) whose remit – reflecting that famed Crystal Palace event – is “to increase the means of industrial education and extend the influence of science and art upon productive industry.” Founded in 1850 under the leadership of Queen Victoria’s husband The Prince Consort, the Commission continues the work of the Great Exhibition – in which marvels of engineering were front and centre.