Hello everyone welcome back to the history hit warfare podcast I'm your host James Rogers and as you know each week twice a week I bring you brand new original episodes on military history but once a week I like to delve deep into the Dan Snow's history hit archive and pull out an episode,

a bonus episode that needs a bit of attention.

And as we approach Trafalgar Day later this month, I wanted to dig out an excellent episode with Andrew Baines, who's curator of HMS Victory.

He talks about the events of the 21st of October, 1805, about the ship, the Battle of Trafalgar itself and of course the man who

won it Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson so here is Dan and Andrew on the Battle of

Trafalgar Day, on the 21st of October. Let us talk. You're the curator of

HMS victory. Let's actually let's first of all talk about victory because it

was Trafalgar was not its first rodeo. Victory has a long history for Trafalgar, doesn't it?

Absolutely. Victory's story really begins almost half a century before

Trafalgar during the Seven Years War when the decision is made that the

Royal Navy needs some new ships and needs them pretty quickly and so work

starts on what is going to become victory and is at the

time the largest warship in the world so when they start building the ship there is an expectation and she has a

re-petitation and she's almost famous if you like before she's even floated

out. The problem we have as far as victory is concerned is that she actually never serves in the

seven years war because she's named for 1759 the year of victories and in particular a fantastic naval victory at the Battle of

Kibran Bay where the French fleet is effectively put out of action as far as we're concerned.

The downside for victory is, although she gets a nice shiny name, there's now not a need for

her and so the role Navy dials back the work on construction and she's

only floated out two years after the war ends and she's then placed immediately in reserve and she sits in reserve

for 13 years.

And then a war presents itself the American War of Independence and she serves in that war.

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