As kid-friendly activities go, sleepovers in quirky places are a pretty cool thing to be able to tell friends and teachers about when heading back to school in September. You can spend a night at the Natural History Museum and wake up to the lions at London Zoo, but did you know you could stay on an almost-as-well-travelled replica of the Golden Hinde – the very ship that legendary English explorer Sir Francis Drake once sailed around the world in?
The perfect summer activity for mini historians or budding explorers, families can sleepover on the Golden Hinde, learning about the ship’s worldly history and all there is to know about sailing on a galleon.
You’ll be greeted by characters dressed head to toe in Elizabethan costume before mastering the art of navigation, taking part in cannon drills, and hearing all sorts of secrets and stories about life at sea.
Once you’ve filled your brain with new skills and facts—and your stomach with hearty vegetable stew (it’s important to fully immerse yourself, you understand)—you’ll head down to the ship’s gundeck for a slumber.
Pack your sleeping bags and expect a worse-than-average kip, but revel in the novelty of it all. What this ship lacks in showers, it makes up for in unforgettability.
The next sleepover will take place on August 27, 2023. You can book your tickets and find out more information on the Golden Hinde’s website. Adults must be accompanied by children – and no, I haven’t written that the wrong way around.
Who is this Sir Francis Drake bloke anyway, and why should I care about his boat?
The Golden Hinde was captained by Francis Drake throughout his three-year trip around the world in the late 1500s. It was the first ever English circumnavigation, and Drake was considered a national hero ever since – actually getting knighted aboard the ship shortly after his return. The ship remained moored in Deptford, not far from where the reconstructed version currents sits, and for a while people would queue for hours to see the famous ship that had sailed around the whole world! But the original Golden Hinde sadly didn’t last – wooden Tudor galleons typically didn’t. It is now believed to be buried in Convoy’s Wharf, and old Tudor shipyard.
The current ship is no less impressive, mind. Today’s Golden Hinde has embarked on its very own world tour—and then some!—and is almost identical in its lack of modern systems and storied past.
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Also published on Medium.