‘A bloke with tattoos on his face started on me over an umbrella’: My day of drinking in Britain’s pub capital

The HMS Warrior stands proud in Portsmouth Harbour as rain raps the windows of the Lady Hamilton. It’s Friday afternoon and the dockside pub is busy with a mature crowd. Perfectly permed ladies and besuited gents tuck into roast dinners – served here seven days a week – while a kettle boils on the bar. It’s a snapshot of a bygone Britain that’s fading away.

Also fading is the certificate above the bar reminding patrons that the Lady Hamilton – named after Nelson’s mistress – was voted the third best pub in Portsmouth in 2018. Past glories. ‘Pompey’ has plenty of those.

Oscar Whild has a few, too. The Navy veteran, who’s drinking in the pub with family and friends, has the rare distinction of having captained the HMS Victory. Yes, the ship that Nelson died on in the Battle of Trafalgar. It’s in dry dock in the nearby Historic Dockyard and is – technically – still in service.

“It’s the oldest commissioned warship in the world,” says Whild, proudly, as a nearby fruit machine makes promises of riches. “If it all kicks off in Ukraine, we’re ready to go.”

It might come to that the way things are going. Only the Victory would “sink in seconds” if they put it on the water, says Whild, who oversaw ceremonial events and maintenance. “It’s just a constant replacing of wood,” he says.

Whild also served in the Gulf War and Falklands, where he was hit by shrapnel on the deck of HMS Broadsword during an Argentinian air raid.

“It was only a scratch,” he says. “My family got a message to say that I’d been injured and was coming home on the QE2 to Southampton. It wasn’t true; the lines of communication had got mixed up. They went down [to Southampton], but I wasn’t there.”

It’s not every day that you get to meet a former captain, let alone of such a distinguished vessel. But pubs are great levellers, you never know who you might find in one. And Portsmouth – birthplace of Charles Dickens, who liked a drink – reputedly has more per square mile than anywhere else in Britain. Other cities make similar boasts – including St Albans, scene of another pub crawl for this paper – but the (contested) data appears to support Pompey’s claim. For now.

“We’ve lost a lot of them,” says Whild. “You never used to walk more than 100 yards for a pub.”

Portsmouth’s taverns used to be rich pickings for Navy press gangs, who went around the city preying on drunk men in the 17th- and 18th-centuries.

“They’d club them over the head, drag them to the ships and take them to fight the French before they sobered up,” says Whild.

Back then Portsmouth was the world’s greatest naval port. It’s still a naval base today, but no ships have been built here since 2013, when 500 years of shipbuilding came to an inglorious end.

“I don’t know who the biggest employer is now,” sighs Whild. “It’s probably the DHS.”

I leave the Lady Hamilton and head towards Old Portsmouth, passing Gunwharf Quays on the way. The sprawling retail complex rose from the rubble of a former ordnance site, but the only firepower here nowadays is Nandos’ peri-peri chicken.

Old Portsmouth’s pretty, cobbled streets are a welcome contrast to the rough and ready harbour. I dive into The Dolphin opposite the cathedral, which claims to be Pompey’s oldest pub. There, under the low-beamed ceiling, a stag party is playing où est le poulet? (Where is the chicken?).

The game involves dressing the stag up as a chicken and sending him off to hide in one of 10 pre-agreed pubs. While he’s there, spending a kitty that the rest have paid into, the other lads split up and look for him.

“You have to have a pint in every pub you look in,” says Freddy Urquhart, the surprisingly sober stag, who’s dressed as Snow White. “They didn’t have a chicken costume,” he explains.

Urquhart, who’s from Oxford and works for an animal charity, is with three pals who have found him already. “Three others are still looking for me.”

I leave them to it and head to nearby Still & West, a shipshape Grade II-listed gastro pub at the harbour entrance. “We’re a bit of a tourist attraction,” coos Barry Martin, a manager at the pub, as Isle of Wight-bound ferries sail past the window. “People sit here for hours watching the ships go by.”

It certainly beats doom scrolling on X. I join them for a bit before returning to the harbour. Big mistake. Dockside Pompey is a different beast. Gone are the genial pensioners. It’s a boisterous, blokey affair now, especially in the Ship Anson, long a favoured haunt for rowdy sailors.

Recalling a tip from Martin, I head instead to Albert Road in nearby Southsea, following tree-lined streets where birds twitter in bushes and stout Edwardian homes have me scrolling Rightmove. In the distance, a wheezing hovercraft sets off for the Isle of Wight.

Albert Street is lined with bars and restaurants and has a welcome buzz. There’s a theatre, a live music venue – the Wedgewood Rooms – and proper boozers, including the Duke of Devonshire, where I arrange to meet my old pal ‘Disco’, a proud Pompey lad.

As I walk into the pub, I immediately upset a bloke with tattoos on his face because I have an umbrella. He gets up and walks towards me but is intercepted, mercifully, by a woman I presume to be his wife. “It’s only an umbrella, dear,” she says, calmingly. He sits back down as the Stones come on the jukebox. The mood lifts.

At the bar, a friendly lady called Deborah* sidles over to me. She’s old enough to be my mum. She came out for a drink “about a day ago”, she says, but is still out. She whispers some French into my ear and tells me that it’s “nice to meet someone sane”, proving she’s a bad judge of character.

I make my excuses and find a table near some guy who looks like an extra in Peaky Blinders and a bloke in a Hawaiian shirt. It’s 5C outside. Characters – there just aren’t enough of them these days.

Speaking of characters, in walks Disco. I tell him about my day in Portsmouth’s pubs; about the Navy veteran, Snow White, Deborah, the guy a few tables over who nearly started on me. He sips his pint and laughs. “Classic Pompey,” he says. “You’ve got to love it.”

Love’s a strong word, but in the haze of a tipsy hour, I feel a certain soft spot for the salty old seadog.

*This name has been changed