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BOTANY BAY, AND THE CHORLEY U-BOAT

I went to Botany Bay on Saturday 14^th May 2011, not with Captain Cook or Star Trek’s Khan, but with my mate Tom Clark. Botany Bay is an 1860’s cotton mill, saved from demolition by being converted into a modern day shopping stalls and museum exhibition hall. The middle Class shops echo Manchester’s Affleck’s Palace but are based in an obscure location between the motorway and the canal, a few miles outside Chorley. There are lots of lovely and unusual if often expensive curiosity stalls, and various display items including a full sized (at least on the outside) Dr Who TARDIS, made by its owner to raise money for Christies, with a chance to admire its interior, and see the Cybermen, & a Dalek placed by its side. There are photos of Bob Caroglees & Spit the Dog from TISWAS opening the TARDIS display to the public leaving a sense of sadness that no one actually connected with Dr. Who was involved in the opening events.

The centre talked us into buying tickets for their bi-gone times display, only to inform us as we set out for it that this was actually fifteen minutes drive away – the ticket actually lasts forever though so I didn’t insist on a refund over this deception.

WE had some food in the mill’s upstairs dining hall, a café that is misleadingly called a restaurant, but the food was excellent/ We also went in the nearby Lock & Keys pub for a pint before crossing a dangerous road for a bus back to Chorley.

The real surrealism of the day was not in the mill that serves at Botany Bay but on the canal outside, where a canal cruiser has been lovingly transformed into a small German U-Boat, U-8047, complete with conning tower and periscope. The Captain, English and not dressed in German uniform, invites you on board for a free tour, though he rightly welcomes donations to the upkeep of his ongoing project. He plays recordings of actual depth charge attacks on a sub, - he used to batten down hatches and turn out lights for this but Health & Safety stopped him. Much of the sub interior is far from authentic period, - he has bits from a James Bond film set, a few panels from Star Wars film sets, the periscope actually shows live CCTV footage of the 360 view round itself as you turn it rather than letting you see the view more directly, etc.

The tour takes about 10-15 minutes and with about 6 people on board it managed to capture the claustrophobia and awkwardness of a real sub. The Captain was delighted and moved by being asked about his ongoing project – a genuine labour of love for him, started as just making a submarine, but finding that visitors kept saying it looked like a U-Boat. I asked him about his visits to other subs, real and fake, and he rummaged out a photo album of his trip to the Das Boot movie set, itself a museum exhibition, and showed plans for improvements scheduled for his boat deck – an intriguing, and totally unexpected end to a very pleasant day out.

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