HMS Victory: 5 things you didn't know about Nelson's flagship
A ship too wide for her dock, a 1903 collision, a wartime bomb and 6,000 trees: five documented stories about Portsmouth's most famous warship.
On 23 October 1903 the ironclad HMS Neptune broke her tow cables in a storm, drifted back into Portsmouth harbour and struck HMS Victory's side, making a hole at the orlop deck. Victory was also too wide for her Chatham dock gates before her 1765 launch, and was hit by an air-raid bomb in 1941.
HMS Victory, Nelson's flagship, has had some unlikely scrapes. The most surprising happened in her old age: on 23 October 1903 the ironclad HMS Neptune, being towed out of Portsmouth, broke her tow cables in a storm, was pushed back into the harbour by wind and tide, and struck Victory's side, making a hole at the orlop deck. Here are five things worth knowing about the ship.
The 1903 collision
Wikipedia's article on HMS Neptune (1874) describes the incident: Neptune broke free of her tugs, and the wind and tide carried her back into the harbour and into Victory. Accounts differ on where Neptune was heading, so we say only that she was being towed out.
Too wide for the dock gates
Victory was built in a dry dock at Chatham. Before her launch on 7 May 1765, shipwright Hartly Larkin is said to have noticed she looked too wide for the dock gates. Measurements showed the gap was at least nine and a half inches too narrow, and workers cut wood from the gates so she could float out. Wikipedia states this flatly and popular accounts agree, but none is a primary record, so call it a well-known anecdote.
Six thousand trees and 26 miles of rope
The National Museum of the Royal Navy says about 6,000 trees went into her construction, and her rigging needs 26 miles of rope with 768 blocks. Wikipedia puts the timber at about 90 per cent oak. A fighting ship of that age was a small forest, rearranged.
Gunports close to the sea
Wikipedia says her lower gunports sat only four feet six inches above the waterline, and her sailing instructions said they should stay closed in rough weather. That is a single-source detail.
A tourist attraction long before 1928
The National Museum of the Royal Navy says Victory became a tourist attraction in the 1810s, over 110 years before she was officially opened to the public in 1928. That is a single-source claim, from the museum.
Bombed in 1941
On 10 March 1941 an air raid dropped a bomb between the ship's side and the dry dock wall. The Royal Navy museum's account says it destroyed two support cradles and a 15-foot section of keel. Wikipedia says it broke her keel and damaged a cradle, and that the problems were not fully rectified until 1964. Sources give different bomb weights, so we leave the weight out.
How solid are these stories?
The collision is documented on the Wikipedia pages for both ships. The 6,000 trees and 26 miles of rope come from the Royal Navy museums, with Wikipedia agreeing on the trees. The dock-gate tale is the most repeated and the least checkable: it appears in Wikipedia and in popular accounts but we could not find a primary record. The gunport height and the 1810s tourists each rest on a single source. We say so because a famous ship attracts a lot of tidy stories.
Seeing her today
Victory is in Portsmouth. We have not verified current opening times or prices, so check the National Museum of the Royal Navy website before you travel.
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