Most museums keep their exhibits behind glass. At the Royal Navy Submarine Museum in Gosport the main exhibit is a real submarine, lifted clear of the water, and you climb right inside it. HMS Alliance stretches more than 85 metres along the Haslar shore, and a walk through her hull is the closest most of us will come to life beneath the waves.
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The museum sits directly across the harbour from Portsmouth, an easy hop by ferry. Alongside the big boat you will find the Royal Navy’s very first submarine and a tiny craft that slipped into an enemy harbour in wartime. It adds up to one of the most memorable days out on the south coast.
A real submarine you can walk through
The tour of HMS Alliance is the heart of a visit. You step in through the pressure hull and work your way from bow to stern, ducking through the round watertight doors between compartments, past the torpedo tubes, the control room and the cramped bunks wedged between the machinery.
Guides lead every tour, and many have served on submarines themselves. They are the reason the visit stays with you, with stories of months spent underwater, hot bunking in shifts and the diesel smell that never quite left. You can look through a working periscope and sweep the harbour, just as a captain once did.
One thing visitors say again and again as they climb back out into the light.
You read about submarines, but you only really understand them once you have banged your head on the same low pipe a crew lived with for weeks.
HMS Alliance, from 1945 to a memorial
Alliance was laid down in the final months of the Second World War and commissioned in 1947, one of the Royal Navy’s A-class boats built for long patrols in the Far East. She served for a quarter of a century, was modernised along the way and ended her career as a training submarine before coming ashore for good.
Today she is the only A-class submarine left in the world, and she carries a second role as the national memorial to British submariners. More than 5,000 of them have died in service since the force began, and their names are remembered here. That weight of history is what makes the walk through her so quiet and so affecting.
Holland 1 and a midget submarine
Inside the galleries sit two very different boats. Holland 1 was the Royal Navy’s first submarine, launched in 1901, a stubby little vessel that the admirals of the day distrusted as underhand and unfair. She sank under tow in 1913, lay on the seabed for decades and was raised in 1982, then painstakingly conserved for display.
Nearby is X24, a midget submarine barely longer than a bus. Craft like this crept into defended harbours in the Second World War, and X24 took part in a daring raid on shipping at Bergen in occupied Norway. Standing beside it, you wonder how a crew of four ever fitted inside.
The Cold War and the silent deep
The story does not stop in 1945. The Silent and Secret gallery follows the submarine into the nuclear age, through the Polaris boats that carried Britain’s deterrent on patrols no one was ever told about. Personal accounts from the men who served give the hardware a human voice.
It is a side of the navy that stayed hidden for decades, and our writers found it the most thought provoking part of the day. You leave with a sense of just how much was asked of the crews who vanished beneath the Atlantic for months at a time.
Getting there and planning your visit
The museum stands at Haslar on the Gosport side of the harbour. The nicest way across from the city is the little passenger ferry from the Harbour station, a crossing we cover in our guide to the Gosport Ferry, followed by a walk or a local bus along the waterfront. A seasonal waterbus also links the site with Portsmouth Historic Dockyard on certain days.
A few things worth knowing before you set out:
| Address | Haslar Jetty Road, Gosport PO12 2AS |
| Closed | Usually Mondays, so check ahead |
| Tickets | Included with a Portsmouth Historic Dockyard ticket |
| Getting there | Gosport Ferry from Portsmouth Harbour, then a short walk |
| Allow | Two to three hours for a proper look |
Prices and opening days change through the year, so confirm before you travel. If naval history is your thing, the submarine museum pairs well with the warships at the dockyard, and a combined ticket often works out cheaper than paying twice.
Few places tell the submariner’s story with such honesty, from the pride to the claustrophobia to the losses. Climb out of Alliance into the daylight and the ordinary bustle of Gosport feels like a small miracle.
