HMS Victory

Lay your hand on the side of the ship, if you can reach it. The timber is cool and slightly rough, thick with layers of paint. Above you, the hull curves outward like a wall of black and ochre. You can smell tar and old oak in the air. Somewhere nearby, gulls cry over the harbour. This is HMS Victory, and she has rested here in Portsmouth's dockyard for more than a century.

The first surprise is simple. This is not just a museum piece. Victory is still a commissioned ship of the Royal Navy. She has a commanding officer and a serving crew, and she is the flagship of the First Sea Lord, the navy's most senior officer. That makes her the oldest commissioned warship in the world. She has not sailed for a very long time, but on paper she is still on duty.

Her story starts in the mid-eighteenth century. The ship was ordered in 1759, a year when Britain won a string of battles on land and sea. People called it a year of victories, and the name followed naturally. Shipwrights built her at Chatham, in Kent, to a design by the naval surveyor Sir Thomas Slade. She was launched in 1765. Then, for years, she waited, because Britain was at peace and did not need her yet.

Think about what went into her. Building a ship like this took thousands of oak trees, most of them grown in English forests over many decades. The hull timbers are extremely thick, especially low down, where cannon fire would strike hardest. Wood was the armour. A ship like Victory was the most complex machine of her age. Each one also stood for a huge investment of a nation's land, labour and money.

Victory is what the navy called a first-rate ship of the line. That meant she was one of the largest warships afloat, with three gun decks. At the Battle of Trafalgar she carried more than one hundred guns. Fully armed, she could fire a broadside of enormous weight from one side at once. Battles in that era were fought in lines. Ships sailed past each other and fired at close range, so size and firepower mattered enormously.

Now the moment that made her famous. On 21 October 1805, off Cape Trafalgar on the coast of Spain, a British fleet met the combined fleets of France and Spain. Victory was the flagship of Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson. Before the fighting began, Nelson had a signal raised from her masts: England expects that every man will do his duty. Flags spelled the words out one by one, and sailors across the fleet read them.

Nelson did not fight in the usual way. Instead of forming one long line, he sent his ships in columns straight at the enemy line to break it apart. Victory led one of those columns. For a long time she sailed forward under heavy fire, unable to fire back. Her wheel was shot away during the approach. Reports say the crew had to steer her from below, working the tiller by hand.

The battle was a decisive British victory, but it came at a cost. In the early afternoon a marksman on the French ship Redoutable shot Nelson as he walked the quarterdeck. The ball went deep into his body. He was carried below to the orlop, the lowest deck, near the waterline. He lived for several hours, long enough to hear that the battle was being won. Then he died, below decks, in the dim lamplight.

When you climb aboard, you can stand on the quarterdeck where he fell. A small plaque marks the spot. Down on the orlop, another marker shows where he died. These are quiet places. People often lower their voices without being asked. His last words have been reported in different ways over the years, so treat any single version with some care. What is certain is the grief across Britain when the news arrived.

After the battle, the crew preserved Nelson's body in a cask of spirits for the long voyage home. Here, folklore takes over. Sailors later told a tale that some of the men secretly drank from the cask on the way. That is why, legend has it, an old naval slang term for a stolen drink was tapping the admiral. It makes a good story, but it is a legend, not a recorded fact.

Life on board was hard for ordinary sailors. At Trafalgar, Victory carried a crew of around eight hundred men and boys. They lived, ate and slept on the gun decks, beside the cannon. Hammocks hung from the beams overhead. As you walk through, notice the low ceilings. Many visitors have to stoop. Imagine the decks filled with smoke and noise, the guns recoiling, and the floor sanded so that men would not slip.

Victory came home to Portsmouth, and over the following decades she served in quieter roles in the harbour. By the early twentieth century her hull was in poor condition. In 1922 she was moved into the dry dock where she stands today, so she could be saved. Since then, restoration has been almost continuous. Old timbers are replaced, the hull is supported, and specialists keep working to stop the wood from decaying.

As you leave, look back at her from a little distance. See how the masts and rigging rise above the dockyard sheds. Notice the bright yellow bands against the black hull, and the rows of gun ports. Around you are other old ships and museums, all part of the same working harbour. Out on the water, modern warships still come and go. Take one last breath of tar and salt. Then walk on slowly.