Onboard the Golden Hinde

‘On Wednesday, we went for a day trip to London. When we got there, we could see the Shard and the Gherkin from the car park!  We then walked across London Bridge (we’d driven over it in the minibus). We passed Pudding Lane, the place where the Great Fire of London started. In a square, we saw the memorial for all the people who died in the fire. There was an inscription in Latin. Next, we ate lunch next to the Tower of London. Then we walked around the tower, saw the moat, and went across Tower Bridge.

Soon, we came across the Golden Hinde. It is a ship in the middle of a square. The figurehead is a golden doe. We were welcomed in by Captain Rio. She took us onto the middle deck and talked to us. I got to be the helmsman. The helmsman had to kneel down because he was in charge of steering the wheel because the opposing ship would try to knock them off.

We were taken below deck to see the place where the officers would eat, map things out, talk and sleep. The captain had the only bed on the ship. The officers (about 20 out of 60 crew members) slept on straw. When the officers and the captain ate, they got the best and the others got their scraps. Weapons were stored here too.

Captain Rio took us down a staircase that lead to the Gun Deck. This is the place where the cannons would be fired. There were five cannons. This is also the place where the other 40 men would have slept. Then we went down another flight of stairs to the food stores. Everything would have been in a barrel, also pickled. Food was precious, so if you were caught stealing it, your hand was nailed to a post for four hours and then chopped off.

We had a brilliant time on the Golden Hinde and fortunately no one lost a hand!’  Maisie C. Year 5