NOSTALGIA: Thousands thronged Portsmouth streets to welcome foreign navies

Thousands line the streets of Portsmouth to cheer French matelots in a convoy of tramcars.

My late father, in his Portsmouth accent, would have said: ’There were fasands (thousands) of people lining the street.’ How right he was.

In the first photograph, taken in 1905, we see the entente cordiale given to French sailors.

Many trams were laid on for a convoy through the city streets ending at the, then, town hall.

Huge crowds outside the town hall in Portsmouth welcoming the Japanese navy. Unimaginable today.

The following year the Japanese navy paid us a visit and again, as you can see in the picture on the right, thousands turned out to greet them.

• With the cameraman standing inside the gates to the goods sheds south of Commercial Road railway bridge we see three young lads thoroughly enjoying themselves in flood water.

The lad in the centre with the grin on his face seems to be saying: ‘Look at me mum!’

On the far side can be seen timetables and adverts for the London South Western railway and the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway.

The boys face in the centre says it all. Flooding in Commercial Road taken from inside the gates of the railway goods shed. bbbb

• The final picture was taken at Bedhampton Camp in 1953 as families celebrated the Queen’s coronation.

This part of the camp with Nissen huts was formerly HMS Daedalus III.

When the navy moved out it was taken over by displaced persons from the Baltic states and then by bombed-out people from Portsmouth waiting for the Leigh Park estate to be built.