This May will be the 250th anniversary of the launching of HMS Victory, the 104-gun first-rate Royal Navy ship of the line best known as Lord Nelson’s flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. HMS Victory was also Keppel’s flagship at Ushant in 1778, Howe’s flagship at Cape Spartel in 1782 and Jervis’s flagship at Cape St Vincent in 1797. Since 1922, the ship has been in No. 2 dock at Portsmouth, UK. Four years ago, a maintenance report concluded that the historic ship was riddled with rot and being pulled apart by its own weight. Since then, the problems have persisted.
This week, the BBC reported that HMS Victory is ‘slowly rotting away from the inside’.
The Portsmouth News reports that this may be last chance to save the ship. “Andrew Baines, curator at the National Museum of the Royal Navy and project director of HMS Victory, said they face a battle to maintain the ship as she is. He said: ‘We are probably at the last opportunity to truly save the ship and make sure that significant historic material is going to survive in her.’ Since taking ownership of Victory in 2012, the museum has taken a slow approach to the work, as fears grow this is the final chance of a project this size can be done on the timber ship.“
The repair estimates are pretty large and can only grow. I believe it would be better to use the money to build a structure around her and keep her dry. Please don’t let them vandalise her in the same manner as Cutty Sark.
Old ships are precious but, unfortunately, not immortal. The best way to keep alive the love of heritage ships is through the sail training programs active in many countries rather than keeping relics in dry-docks. Get young people interested in old ships and they will survive where they belong: at sea. As a former skipper of a sail training ship, I have seen the delight in young sailors’ eyes. They also get seasick, however.
Unfortunately the UK is currently dominated by romantic fiction including imaginary volunteers who do things ordinarily accomplished by civil servants, public employees and contractors and lots of money. No money, no reality. Them’s the breaks.