Great Britain. Royal Navy - Nelsons Victory: 250 years of war and peace

CopyrightBrian Lavery 2015

First published in Great Britain in 2015 by
Seaforth Publishing,
Pen & Sword Books Ltd,
47 Church Street,
Barnsley S70 2AS

www.seaforthpublishing.com

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978 1 84832 232 5
EPUB ISBN: 978 1 47385 494 9
PRC ISBN: 978 1 47385 500 7

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INTRODUCTION & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

HMS Victory was launched, or rather floated out, from a dry-dock at Chatham on 7 May 1765. Nowpreserved at Portsmouth, she is perhaps the most famous ship in the world, and certainly the most famous vessel still extant. Nelsons career is in a sense parallel to that of the Victory, both started their seafaring life at Chatham in the third quarter of the eighteenth century, and his cult continues long after his death, still in parallel with the Victory.

Many books have been written about HMS Victory, mostly focussing on the two years when she was Nelsons flagship, or on the single afternoon of the Battle of Trafalgar, though a notable exception was Kenneth Fenwicks work of 1959 that sought to tell the full story of the ship since she first took to the water 250 years ago. Anew audience and new research since Fenwicks time offers scope for a fresh appreciation of the great ship. So this present work contains some surprises: that the ship was almost wrecked on her launch, that diplomacy conducted on board her played a crucial role in causing Napoleons invasion of Russia in 1912, and it is said that in 1914 Kaiser Wilhelm set the First World War in motion on a desk made from her timbers. The book tells the story of Horatio Nelson, who was born a few weeks before his most famous ship was ordered, and whose career paralleled hers in many ways. It does not ignore the Battle of Trafalgar, and indeed it offers some new material on the battle and the campaign that led up to it. But it says much more about the other lives of the ship, which at different times was a flagship, a fighting ship, a prison hospital ship, a training ship for officers and boys, a floating courtroom, a signal school, a regional tourist attraction and a national icon. It looks at the ship through many eyes, including Queen Victoria, admirals, midshipmen and ordinary seamen, and Beatrix Potter who visited as a girl.

The career of the Victory reflected the changes in the navy and society throughout her long history. She was an expression of power in the long wars with France. Like Nelson himself, she had low points; she became a prison ship before being rescued and rebuilt and was often neglected while afloat in Portsmouth Harbour. She was an early training ship for naval boys and then became the Royal Navys first signal school in the age of electricity and early radio, which was highly appropriate for the ship that sent the most famous naval signal of all time. She lay in Portsmouth Harbour as the navy changed from wood to iron and steel, from sail to steam and to long-range shell-firing guns. She literally collided with the modern age in 1903 when she was hit by the battleship Neptune. In 1922, she entered dry dock to become a pioneering preserved ship, an example to many other vessels around the world. She continued to serve as an inspiration during the Second World War, which she survived despite being hit by a German bomb.

The Victory is today very much a shrine to Lord Nelson but this book also deals with her designers, the dockyard workers who built her, and the thousands of men and boys who sailed, fought or trained onboard her. Though life in the ship was almost entirely masculine, there is evidence that women served on board her in the 1790s.

Though the Victory has always been very much a British icon, she has an international dimension. Though British oak was revered material for shipbuilding, much of her original timber came from the Baltic and in later years she was restored using teak from India and iroko from West Africa. At least seventy-five of the men who fought on board her at Trafalgar came from outside Great Britain, including some from the United States, West Indies, Africa, Netherlands, Sweden and even four Frenchmen. The Victory played a key role in setting up the alliance, including Russia, Prussia and Sweden, which led to the downfall of Napoleons empire.

Many people are due acknowledgments for their help: in the longer term, my late friends David Lyon and Colin White; former colleagues in the National Maritime Museum including Roger Knight, Chris Ware, Pieter van de Merwe and Simon Stephens; colleagues during twenty years on the Victory Advisory Technical Committee, especially the successive chairmen Alan McGowan and Jonathan Coad, as well as George Lawrence, Peter Goodwin; Jeremy Michell and Lawrie Phillips, as well as successive captains of the Victory, and the current curator Andrew Baines. I would like to thank the staffs of the National Museum of the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines Museum, the London Library, the National Archives and the National Maritime Museum, and Jenny Wraight of the Naval Historical Branch. Special acknowledgements are also due to Lord De Saumarez of Guernsey, Christer Hgg for Swedish sources and Rachel Magowan for German contacts; also to Julian Mannering of Seaforth for co-ordinating the publication.

This book originated when Richard Holdsworth and Alex Patterson of Chatham Historic dockyard asked me to be guest curator for an exhibition to commemorate 250 years since the Victorys launch, and I am grateful to them for the opportunity, and for the paths it led me into. But that is not the end of the story for the Victory is likely to remain as the centre of attraction at Portsmouth Dockyard far into the future. With her new management and the beginning of a long-term repair, there are still many issues to be resolved but her history has not come to an end.

Previous page: The Victorys magnificent stern.

(Jonathan Eastland/Ajax).

WAR FOR THE WORLD

A Meeting of the Board

Their Lordships of the Admiralty gathered in the Boardroom as usual in the morning of 13 December 1758, after travelling through the bustling and often lawless streets of London. It was not a particularly cold morning for the time of year, the temperature did not drop below 40 Fahrenheit (4 Celsius) and the weather was fair, but their lordships probably welcomed the heat coming from the marble fireplace, perhaps lit by the necessary woman or housekeeper, Mrs Clack. The lords took their seats round a long table. At one end of the room stood a grand cabinet with bookcases and a globe in the centre. Above that was a wind indicator, made in 1749 by the marine artist and ships carpenter John Cleveley.

The Admiralty Boardroom as drawn by Rowlandson and Pugin in 1808. The collaboration is not entirely successful in that Rowlandsons figures are not to the same scale as the room and furniture. The First Lord is nearest the viewer, the assistant secretary is reading out a paper at the other end of the table.