The USS Torsk is a diesel-electric submarine that saw service in World War II (receiving two battle stars) and was the American naval vessel to sink the last enemy ship – a Japanese coastal defence frigate – in the conflict.

The following photos are shot from my phone and are from around his house in Maryland, showing off the lovely autumnal browns of the fallen leaves and even a close encounter with some wildlife in that attractive area of the world.

Photos of the USS Constellation were from a mix of my backup camera and my phone as 2012 was the year I went to America and left my main camera bag at home. Still makes me shudder to think of that memory.

In the main hangar the big attraction was the SR-71 Blackbird which is just a beautiful-looking plane with some fantastic lines and curves to it.

An attached section to the main hangar in the museum housed spacecraft, including the star attraction of the Space Shuttle Discovery. It’s a lot larger than I imagined it would be and it was a fantastic experience to be able to walk around and take photos of something that had spent just over a year in space across its dozens of flights.

Photos from the Taney’s exterior and on its deck taken on my phone:

Photos from inside the Taney:

Although I’ve mentioned it on other posts from this trip to America I’ll repeat it again here: this was the trip that forever sends shivers down my spine. We’d needed to fly out from Heathrow early in the morning so we’d awoken at some horrible hour in the dark and grabbed the bags from the room where they’d been stored the evening before and headed off. And about halfway to the airport some tired part of my brain suddenly perked up and said:

Hey, remember how dark it was this morning? And remember how the room with the bags in has a black floor? And remember how the suitcases were bright yellow so you packed them in the car? And remember how the camera bag is black in a dark room on a black floor? Any recollection of picking that up?

The Trip Where I Forgot To Bring My Camera. Still horrifying to think about. I did have a camera as I’d put my older DSLR in a case on the slight chance that my wife might have wanted to use it. She never had before but there was always a first time. So, armed with not the camera I wanted and only the single lens it had on it plus my phone I was still able to take some shots but my photographic heart was never quite in the right place.

It was a lovely November day to visit Baltimore’s historic seaport and tourist attraction; clear skies and a clean crispness in the air. The transformation of the Inner Harbour from a dead and decaying, formerly-industrialised, shallow port abandoned by visiting vessels in the 1950s due to economic changes into a thriving spot for recreation became a model for waterfront renewal around the world. Parks and museums were erected and hotels and other attractions such as an aquarium and a science centre were built following a flood of tourism in the wake of the tall ships making a stop during the 1976 bicentennial celebrations.

Our interest was in the floating museum ships. Photos from three of the ships can be found in earlier travel portfolio posts here:

• USCGC Taney – the last floating survivor during the attack on Pearl Harbour
• USS Torsk – the American naval vessel to sink the last enemy ship in World War 2
• USS Constellation – the flagship of the Union’s anti-slave trade African Squadron in the American Civil War and the last sail-only warship built by the US Navy

We also visited the United States Lightship Chesapeake. If you’re as much a fan of sci-fi as me then you too will be disappointed to learn that the name has no bearing on its means of propulsion, instead referring to its use as a lighthouse. Launched in 1930 and used in World War 2 to protect Boston, Chesapeake, like all lightships, was mothballed in the 1960s as permanent lighthouses were built and automated buoys become more commonplace.

The only blot on the landscape of Baltimore’s otherwise attractive harbour area was the prevalence of homeless people there, some of whom we saw rifling through litter bins. This isn’t unique to Baltimore, of course – our visits to Washington D.C. were real eye-openers as to just how many homeless people there were, and every city around the world will have its share – but it is still something that simply shouldn’t be possible to happen in supposedly rich countries supposedly proud of their supposedly Christian values.

The last of the museums we visited was not a ship but was still maritime-themed, this being the Seven Foot Knoll Lighthouse. Built and first lit in the 1850s then rebuilt in wrought iron in 1875, this cylindrical, screw-pile lighthouse became automated in 1949 and was deactivated in 1988. It was then moved from its location at the mouth of the Patapsco River to one of the piers in the Inner Harbour and turned into a museum. While not very large and not containing an awful lot to see other than attractive views it did have a very entertaining custodian who was immensely pleased to discover we were not only from England but also from a historic naval city and we ended up talking to him for ages.

Our trip to Baltimore wasn’t a long one but the Inner Harbour was beautiful and there was plenty to see and do there for several more trips should we find ourselves visiting again.

It’s fortunate that I’d thought to sling my older DSLR and kit lens into the suitcase at all – I’d harboured an inkling that maybe my wife would want to use it (nope) – because this did give me a fallback option to simply using my phone, but it just wasn’t the same.

This was the second visit we’d made to the United States in two years and both to similar geographical locations as the main purpose of the trip was to pay a visit to my wife’s sister who was living there at the time for work-related reasons. Our America 2011 trip saw us based in Virginia at my sister-in-law’s apartment with occasional hops across the state border to Maryland where her boyfriend was based. In 2012 we actually stayed with the boyfriend as his house was substantially larger (everything’s bigger in America) and we were also travelling with my in-laws this time since their US-based daughter was now pregnant. Both spots weren’t too far from Washington, D.C. hence us checking the place out both years.

When we’d seen the city in 2011 – Washington, D.C., 2011 – it had just been the pair of us and we’d hit museums and galleries because those are the sorts of things that interest us. For 2012 there was less of that as it didn’t interest others quite as much (plus we’d done it before, plus I was still fuming about leaving my camera at home), hence the following photos being mostly just external shots of some of the American capital’s tourist landmarks.

Brace yourself now for some photographs of the White House, the Jefferson Memorial, the Capitol building, the Washington Monument, and the Lincoln Memorial, just like every other person who visits Washington, D.C. While the material for the buildings and structures and general appearance looks similar and aesthetically-pleasing it’s interesting to see the different styles of architecture surprisingly working seamlessly together.

Those photos were obviously from a simple walk along the length of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., and if you’ve never visited the city before then you can expect to do the same thing when you eventually do because everyone does.

During this trip we hit the city of Washington twice. On the second occasion we made for the Chinatown area in order to have a meal together; sister-in-law and boyfriend, parents-in-law, and my wife and me. The place we ate at was Tony Cheng‘s, an Asian restaurant, and while I can’t remember the specific details of why we ate there – it might have been because our anniversary and my in-laws’ anniversary had all been in that week but it could easily have also been to celebrate the pregnancy, or both, or none – and I can’t recall what we ate, I’m going to assume it was good because we didn’t really have a bad meal in America. I can tell you that some of us had Polynesian Grog cocktails, though.

Anyway, to the day afterwards where we decided to take a bit of a look around nearby Greenwich before catching the tube to the train station and heading home.

We made our way to the National Maritime Museum, and from there we took a look around the Cutty Sark which had not long been reopened following restoration work after a fire in 2007. I’d only brought my 100mm macro lens with me (I’d not taken the camera to the gig) so the photos I ended up taking around the nineteenth century clipper ended up being a little bit odd and arguably artsy. Historical Ship Ropes: A Collection.

An odd surprise when visiting the Cutty Sark was finding the Long John Silver Figurehead Collection housed beneath the vessel. A collector of maritime objects, Sydney Cumbers lost an eye as a child and took to wearing an eyepatch that gave rise to his nickname. The 101 figureheads in his collection were donated to the Cutty Sark trust in 1953 after she became a museum ship open to the public.

From the Cutty Sark we walked under the Thames through the 370 metres-long Greenwich Foot Tunnel, opened in 1902, with distinctive entrances beneath glass-domed buildings. It was here that we were treated to another surprising sight in the form of a ballerina posing for a photo-shoot.

A few random photos from the financial district to finish off.

Greenwich is definitely one of the more interesting areas of London and we really ought to return at some point to do it more justice, particularly around the park area to the south of the museum.