HMS Victory

Dan Snow's History Hit

History Hit

History

4.7 • 12.9K Ratings

🗓️ 27 March 2023

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

During the Battle of Trafalgar, the men on the gun decks of HMS Victory felt the heat of fire from above and from below; they dodged enemy cannon balls shot from just 2 metres away. HMS Victory was the flagship of Nelson's fleet during that historic clash with the French and Spanish on the 21st of October 1805. She is a mighty vessel to behold; at over 70m long, 6000 oaks were felled for her planking and 27 miles of rope used for her rigging. She was and still is a feat of engineering with impressive firepower-104 state of the art guns and manned by a crew of over 800.

Dan walks the gun decks with Andrew Baines, Deputy Executive Director of Museum Operations National Museum of the Royal Navy, who knows everything there is to know about Victory. They talk about life on board the ship, from punishment to surgery to using the bathroom and tell the story of Nelson's dramatic demise on the very spot where he was shot in battle.

The reason Dan is visiting Portsmouth's historic dockyard is because there is a huge restoration project going on to save Victory and preserve it for future generations. As a wooden ship, she is inherently biodegradable so Andrew and his team are working around the clock for the next decade to restore the ship as she was at the Battle of Trafalgar. Today the ship's greatest foe is not the French but the deathwatch beetle that Burroughs into the wood ship's timbre, destroying it from the inside. Dan meets with Diana Davis, Deputy Director of the Victory Conservation Project, to talk about this nemesis and the vital, and costly, work they are doing. Now is a great time to experience HMS Victory as you've never seen her before while archeologists and conservators work on the ship in front of your eyes. You can find out more information here: https://www.nmrn.org.uk/visit-us/portsmouth-historic-dockyard/hms-victory

Produced by Mariana Des Forges and mixed by Dougal Patmore.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, everybody. Welcome to Downstone's History. I'm walking in to the historic Dockyard in
0:07.3	Portsmouth, one of my favourite places on the earth, where they have not just H.M.
0:13.8	Miss Warrior, the world's first iron-built battleship, not just the Marriots, Henry VIII's
0:20.3	flagship, which sunk just off Portsmouth in the 16th century, but also H.M. Miss Victory,
0:25.0	the world's great as ship. I'm here because H.M. Miss Victory is being restored. A
0:28.6	giganticly expensive, hugely ambitious project to make sure that Victory survives for decades
0:34.8	to come. I'm very excited to be meeting up with old friend Andrew Baines. You've heard
0:38.5	on the podcast before. We're talking about Victory itself. It's history. It's experienced
0:42.3	during Trafalgar, a little bit about Nelson who died on Victory on that famous day.
0:47.8	But I'm also meeting Diana Davis, who's the head of conservation. She's going to talk
0:51.8	me through the specific challenges of conserving this massive wooden ship exposed to the
0:58.1	British weather, and in particular, she's going to tell me about Victory's greatest enemy,
1:03.8	not the French, but the Death Watch Beetle. Enjoy.
1:07.8	The Tommy Tom, Tom Tom, you know she's God's brave, the King.
1:13.6	No Black Point unit until there is first and Black unit. Never to go to war with one another
1:19.4	in a game. And the battle has cleared the power.
1:28.3	So welcome to the pod, everybody. I'm just coming around McCorn and now, and I'm seeing
1:33.3	there's HMS Victory, but I'm seeing how I've never seen them before because the main
1:37.2	mast is missing, and there is a gigantic tent, almost like a pavilion, to provide a safe
1:43.5	covering for all the work that's being done. You know what, Victory's had quite the life.
1:47.3	The Keel laid down. 1759, the year of Victory's named that fateful year when British armies
1:55.2	and fleets were victorious right around the world. She was launched in 1765, but there's
	...

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