Town-class

The walk across the gangplank from the South Bank of the river Thames gives you a good sense of the size. It’s a light cruiser, so it’s a lot smaller than other WWII vessels you can tour.

Ship's bell

One of the first things you see when you board the Belfast is the solid silver ship's bell.

Looking aft

Down the length of the ship, Tower Bridge downriver.

Once enemies, now friends

The ship docked alongside the Belfast on one of my tour days was the German cruise ship Berlin. If that’s not a sign of time and the world moving on, I don’t know what is.

Load them guns

Inside the front turret. The shells are lifted from far below (which we’ll see later).

Anchor's aweigh

A serious anchor.

Starboard amidships

Like most museum ships, many passageways are filled with other exhibits. Here, a replica of one of the torpedoes the Belfast carried.

Clean clothes

The laundry room from the 1950s refit. Before then the crew washed their laundry in buckets.

Meow

Yep, that’s a cat. These soulless killing machines were kept on board to do what they did best: kill things. Specifically, mice.

Art

There was an art exhibit called "The Tourists" going on when I was there. It was some kind of take on Mardi Gras. It was freaky.

From this room music was piped through the ship.

Woodworking

Ships need to be able to repair themselves, to an extent, while on tour. Here you can see the shipwright’s room.

Sick bay

Recovery cots dead ahead, operating room to the right.

Root canal

Can’t escape the need for a dentist at sea.

Switches

There is something so cool, and sort of menacing, about exposed and massive switches like these.

Galley

The quite sizeable galley. It continues back farther about three rooms this size.

Soup?

Soup, anyone? Soup, everyone.

Hot cross buns

Fancy a biscuit? Yep, it’s a bakery.

Transmitting station

The mechanical computers here calculated where to aim the guns.

Forward steering position

Different from what you'd expect, the main steering wheel is actually inside the ship. No windows.

Gyro compass

This gyro compass always points north, to aid navigation in high seas.

Hot water

This washroom is close to the engine room, so hot water didn't have to get piped around the ship (much).

Pipes, tubes and ducts

The forward engine room. On the right is one of the huge fans to feed the boilers.

Engine room floor

A rare open space in the engine room. The boilers are on the right.

Maze

Imagine, there were many men who knew where every one of these pipes went and what it carried.

Not hot, right now

Pre-heated fuel oil got atomized here, to get sent through those tiny holes...

Furnace

...to the furnace to make steam. The steam was used for a variety of things, including turning generators for electric power.

Lucky 7

Up to seven of the "oil fuel registers" were used on each boiler.

Full speed ahead

Literally.

Throttles

Three separate controls: one for ahead, one for astern and one for efficient cruising.

Gears!

I saw this awesomeness on the far side of the engine room. Any guesses?

Reduction gear

This is one of the huge reduction gears connected to the propeller shaft.

Not exactly an LCD

These gorgeous analog dials gave the engineers everything they needed to keep the engines running.

Canteen

I thought they did a great job stocking the canteen with cans and goods that would have been found while the ship was in service.

Yo, ho, ho

A still. No joke, British sailors got rations of grog.

Hammock Town

There were few crew quarters on the Belfast. Sailors instead had hammocks stretched above areas that had other uses.

Sleep where you eat

Not a lot of daily variety.

Armory

Deep inside the ship is the armory.

Up elevator

Ignore the creepy sailor mannequin. The shells would be loaded into elevators and raised into the turrets.

VHF and UHF equipment room

The gear here, along with antennas outside, allowed the Belfast to communicate with other vessels, the shore and so on.

Not bad for some

The officers got far better accommodations, with little things like "beds" and "a window."

Radar

Radar would have been cutting-edge naval technology in the Second World War, but of course the Belfast saw service afterwards and was kept up to date.

The bleeps, the sweeps and the creeps

I didn't detect any enemy aircraft. I might have been reading it wrong.

High tech

Here an incredibly lifelike mannequin worked to figure out what caused a blue screen of death. I guess Win98 was terrible in the '60s too.

Compass platform

The bridge (or compass platform, as it was called), was exposed prior to the 1950s refit.

The view upriver

Rumor has it the guns are fixed on a gas station on the M25, the motorway that rings London.

Boat deck

A variety of small boats were stored here, along with a Supermarine Walrus.

From the Tower

If you're headed to the Tower of London, or Tower Bridge, you can't miss the Belfast, and if you're a fan of WWII ships, you shouldn't.