Fate of Nelson’s Flagship

Central to the story of the Battle of Trafalgar and Vice Admiral Lord Nelson is his flagship—HMS Victory. The survival of this ship for 240 years could never have been predicted. The Victory might have been destroyed through battle, accident, or Admiralty decision; since 1831 her growing iconic value has saved her from the last fate.' Through logs, surveys, and progress books, the evolution of the Victory may be traced from launch to the present day.

The keel of the Victory, a First Rate, was laid at Chatham Dockyard in 1759, and construction of the important vessel was overseen by the master shipwright of the yard, John Lock and, after his death in 1762, Edward Allin. The fact that 1759 witnessed British victories at Lagos, Minden, Quebec, and Quiberon Bay was surely a factor in her naming. But, with the Seven Years’ War ending in 1763, the hull was not floated out of dock until 7 May 1765, allowing her timbers to season “in frame.” This, and the exceptional thickness of her timbers, may well have contributed to her longevity.² After sea trials she was laid up “in ordinary,” without a commission and manned by a skeleton crew, in the river Medway at Chatham.

In 1771 and 1775 the Victory needed repairs to planking below her waterline to remedy leaks, perhaps caused by infestations of shipworms or wood-boring gribbles in the Medway.³ First commissioned in March 1778, a month after France joined the American War for Independence, the Victory sailed to blockade Brest, where she engaged six ships of the escaping French fleet. After minor repairs she returned to the Brest blockade, helping to capture a French convoy in December 1781.⁴

Decommissioned in 1783, the Victory had commenced a “middling repair” when structural defects caused by her coppering in 1780 were discovered. Most of the thousands of bolts attaching copper sheathing to her lower hull had thoroughly rusted. According to a contemporary observer, “. . . it is the general opinion of the Officers and Carpenters, who have inspected her, that had she touched the Ground ever so slightly she must have gone to pieces.”⁵ Underwater iron fastenings were replaced with those made of copper or other non-ferrous alloys. In 1787, after another large repair and a short commission, she was out of service until 1790, when she was in the Channel as the flagship of Samuel Lord Hood. In 1793 she served in the Mediterranean when Hood captured Toulon, Corsica, San Fiorenzo, and Cadiz, returning to England in November 1797.

The Victory, 32 years old and deemed unfit for further sea service, was converted into a prisoner-of-war hospital ship in December. Two years later, however, the First Rate Impregnable ran aground and was lost, and in 1800 a “great repair” to the Victory costing £70,000 was begun. Her outward appearance changed to increase her seaworthiness. The ship’s open galleries were removed and the entire stern closed in, and her heavy figurehead was replaced with a lighter version. The ship’s hull, previously bright with rosin above the lower-deck gun ports, was painted in black and yellow-ocher bands, the port lids remaining yellow. In the days before the Battle of Trafalgar, her port lids were painted black to aid recognition in battle, producing the “Nelson checker” pattern.⁶

In mid-May 1803, Britain declared war on France, and the Victory was made ready. Lord Nelson, commander in chief of the Mediterranean Fleet, came aboard the Victory on 31 July 1803. Thereafter, according to maritime historian Peter Goodwin, “Nelson and Victory became synonymous.”⁷ Her total broadside weight—1,148 pounds—was lighter than when she first set to sea, as lighter guns and more powerful carronades reduced the total number of guns required. Her armament included: 30 32-pounders, 28 24- pounders, 30 long 12-pounders, 12 short 12-pounders, 2 medium 12-pounder carriage guns, and 2 68-pounder carronades.⁸

Interesting details of the 21 October 1805 Battle of Trafalgar are contained in the Victory’s logbooks. Her crew were at their quarters by 1100 that day and took their meal of “pork and wine” at their guns. At 1125 the Victory hoisted Nelson’s famous signal: “England expects that every man will do his duty.” Soon the flagship came under fire from five enemy vessels. The wheel was smashed, and the Victory was temporarily out of control, but her master, Thomas Atkinson, organized secondary steering from the gunroom. It was recently discovered that ships were fitted with such devices in 1803, and it is therefore possible that helm orders were shouted down to Atkinson through copper speaking tubes. Although crewmen from the French 74-gun Redoutable boarded the Victory, the flagship’s Marines and carronades decimated them, while her other guns kept firing into the enemy ship’s hull until she surrendered.⁹ Royal Marine Second Lieutenant Lewis Rotely starkly conveyed the traumatic experience of being on the Victory during her murderous exchanges with Bucentaure, French Commander in Chief Pierre Villeneuve’s 80-gun flagship:

A man should witness a battle in a three-decker from the middle deck, for it beggars all description: it bewilders the senses of sight and hearing. There was the fire from above, the fire from below, besides the fire from the deck I was upon, the guns recoiling with violence, reports louder than thunder, the decks heaving and the sides straining. I fancied myself in the infernal regions, where every man appeared a devil. Lips might move, but orders and hearing were out of the question; everything was done by signs.¹⁰

Final numbers of dead and injured in the Victory were high: 102 out of the original complement of 820.¹¹

After enduring the devastating battle and losing their commander, the surviving crewmen had to make the Victory seaworthy; a storm was approaching. On Wednesday 23 October, sailors were “securing the Masts, Yards and Rigging— Carpenters Employed stopping the Shot Holes &.c as necessary” and pumping out the 12 inches of water that poured into the hold each hour.

The 64-gun Polyphemus took the ship in tow, but during the storm on Saturday 26 October the main yard was lost. The spar “Split the Main Top Sail and Main Sail all to Pieces,” and the tow- line parted. The next morning the bigger, 98-gun Neptune took the Victory in tow, but on the 28th the towline again parted and Neptune “Carried away her Fore Top Mast.” Finally reaching Gibraltar on 29 October, the Victory anchored in Rosia Bay.¹²

Fitted with jury masts, the Victory sailed from Gibraltar on 4 November, arriving at Spithead on 5 December. There, Portsmouth Naval Academy drawing master John Livesay sketched her, revealing the vessel’s battered hull, in preparation for Nicholas Pocock’s paintings of the Battle of Trafalgar.

Docked at Chatham in March 1806, the Victory's refit was overseen by Master Shipwright Robert Seppings, and in December 1808 the ship set out to evacuate Lieutenant General Sir John Moore’s army from Corunna, Spain, after its defeat of French Marshal Nicolas Soult’s forces.¹³ After disembarking the rescued troops in England, the Victory fought two Baltic campaigns under Vice Admiral Sir James Saumarez and in January 1811 was temporarily converted into a troopship for the Peninsular campaign.¹⁴ She was laid up in ordinary from late 1812 until December 1823, when the vessel was converted to a guard ship, and from 1824 to 1831 she served as a flagship and residence of the port admiral in Portsmouth Harbor.¹⁵

In October 1831, First Sea Lord Thomas M. Hardy, the Victory's captain at Trafalgar, refused to sign the order for the old warship’s disposal. Naval veterans began giving unofficial tours, and—helped by the visits of Princess, then Queen, Victoria in 1833 and 1848—the Victory was increasingly viewed as an icon. She subsequently served as tender for the 131 -gun Duke of Wellington and then as flagship of the commander in chief, Naval Home Command.

In 1903 the iron battleship Neptune was being towed to a breaker’s yard when her towline parted and she accidentally rammed the Victory, badly damaging the old flagship’s port side. That event and the 1905 Trafalgar centennial raised questions about the vessel’s future. The Society for Nautical Research, however, raised funds to put the Victory into dock at Portsmouth’s Royal Naval Shipyard in 1922 and to restore her to her 1805 appearance. Nelson’s flagship was opened to the public in 1928.

Over the last ten years, thanks to an investment of at least £1 million by the Society of Nautical Research and £2 million by the Royal Navy, archaeologists have analyzed the Victory’s construction and historians have searched archives to restore the vessel to her 1805 configuration. For instance, the ship’s grand magazine has been painstakingly reconstructed in its 1803 refit state, lined with copper, lead, and plaster to reduce as far as humanly possible the risk of fire and explosion. The only surviving ship of the line from an era that spanned the American Revolution to the Napoleonic Wars, HMS Victory now serves as a meticulously restored piece of naval history’s past.