STANDING ON THE WATERFRONT IN PORTSMOUTH, with the choppy waters of the harbor sparkling like crumpled aluminum foil in front of me, it’s difficult to make sense of the scathing comments of previous visitors about the English seaside city. American novelist Henry James once labeled Portsmouth “dirty” and “dull.” Jane Austen claimed “its vile sea breezes” were “the ruin of beauty and health.” Current British prime minister Boris Johnson famously quipped it was “full of drugs, obesity, and underachievement.”
Yet while Portsmouth might lack the dreaming spires of Oxford or the cosmopolitan buzz of London, the city has played an epoch-defining role in global history. Its fabled dockyard was once home to the world’s greatest naval port. Here, in the 18th and 19th centuries, intrepid explorers and admirals sallied forth from the heavily fortified waterfront on their way to the empire’s distant shores. But
