#HMS Victory

[ltwilliammowett]

HMS Victory's upper gun deck: thirty 12-pounder cannon, photo by Maritime Photographic

[clove-pinks]

Reblog if you think the girl afloat is just as pretty as the girl in dry dock. 🙏🏻♥️

[neylo]

Before Trafalgar

As you noticed I have been experimenting with a new drawing style. I found inspiration in 1700s and 1800s coloured drawings and I used your requests as an inspiration. Thank you!

Here we have the results - Horatio Nelson in his HMS Victory cabin. I have visited HMS Victory last Friday and I loved it. Then I saw my partner standing there, listening to their audio guide… so I grabbed the pose and used it as a reference.

Nelson’s features are based on his life mask so I’m very satisfied with the accuracy of the picture!

[illustratus]

Trafalgar; Victory at noon - H.M.S. 'Victory' breaking the enemy line and raking the stern of the French flagship by Montague Dawson

[theredontbedragons]

HMS Victory

[smashorpassgilf]

[kelvinthegoatt]

Small sketch

[nix-xon]

It's my birthday today!

I bought myself a sextant lmao

It goes well on my Napoleonic Wars shelf, and is a good pair with my bosun's whistle

(and yes, those are HMS Victory bookends that my brother got for my birthday a few years back)

[vox-anglosphere]

HMS Victory being towed to Gibraltar with the dead body of Lord Nelson after his historic defeat of Napoleon's navy - 21 October 1805

[aber-flyingtiger]

Visited the National Museum of the Royal Navy (Portsmouth) back in February, and then completely forgot to post anything.

Last time I went there was about 20 years ago and Mary Rose was not yet fully preserved- but these days she looks incredible, and was perhaps my favourite part of the trip. I would highly recommend a visit, even if it is just to see Mary Rose.

[jamesfitzjamesdotcom]

Age of Sail ❤️

Ships: HMS Dreadnought (1906) and HMS Victory (1765)

[ltwilliammowett]

The two oldest commissioned ships of the World - USS Constitution (227 years old) and HMS Victory (259 years old)

[clove-pinks]

J.M.W. Turner, The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up, 1838 (The National Gallery).

I’m starting to see the 1830s as the birth (berth?) of the modern museum ship industry. Notably: there was a public outcry in 1831 when HMS Victory was scheduled to be broken up, which led (eventually) to the ship being preserved; and in the United States, Oliver Wendell Holmes’ poem “Old Ironsides” was published in 1830, leading to national support for the preservation of USS Constitution. I know that both Victory and Constitution had many inglorious years before their eventual state as museum ships, being used as training vessels and tenders etc.; but being spared from destruction in the 1830s when they were obsolete vessels is arguably what saved them.

Was it Romanticism, and opposition to the increasingly industrial world? Steam power was commercially viable in the 1810s, and by the 1820s it was widespread. The Battle of Navarino in 1827 is usually cited as the last major action under sail, but steam-powered ships were seeing military use before that (and I don’t just mean experimental craft). The steamship Diana saw action in the First Anglo-Burmese War in 1824. In any event, 1830s people had to be aware that they were seeing the end of the Age of Sail, and that the last remaining battleships from that era were going to become increasingly scarce.

[not-a-fool-entire]

found this lithograph of HMS Victory at an antique/thrift shop!

apparently it's from the early 1960's

[illustratus]

The Battle of Trafalgar: HMS 'Victory' Steering for the Enemy by Eduardo de Martino

[rulebaetannia]

Parties? On HMS Victory? Oh, the shame of it!

There is nothing funnier to me than this piece from some years ago, in which the Daily Mail tries to lazily fear monger about allowing small and respectable receptions and dinners on the over two hundred year old warship, HMS Victory.

"The Great Cabin, where Admiral Lord Nelson plotted his strategy during the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, is available for fine dining by a group of 20 people for a minimum cost of £30,000." Trying to make it sound so grandiose and therefore undignified to have a dinner party in the room that Nelson planned his battles in! And that Nelson lived in. And that Nelson invited people into to come visit him. And...had dinner parties in.

"[. . .]dinner on the Lower Gun Deck – where the lower ranks survived on stale biscuits and ale – starts at £240 a head." What an affront to history! Eating fancy food where battle hardened sailors once survived on dusty crumbs! Never mind that Nelson constantly went out of his way to make sure his sailors ate well, but no one writing this actually cares one whit about Nelson or Victory.

"The use of the vessel – which led Britain to victory against the French and Spanish fleets – will dismay traditionalists who believe treasured parts of the nation’s heritage should not be exploited for commercial benefit." The money is specifically going toward the on going restorations of Victory, of course. Unfortunately these traditionalists don't seem to be aware that Nelson loved dinner parties so much that his two closest companions, Captain Hardy and Lady Hamilton, were both known for their knack and grace when hosting dinner parties. Honestly, eating overpriced food and pretending to know about wine is probably the most historically accurate thing you could do on this ship.

Also funny, they quote people who have much reason to care about the ship--a descendant of Nelson's, the Nelson society, the National Museum of the Royal Navy--all of whom were generally of the opinion this is fine, as long as the ship is taken care of and respected. But surely the dignity of Victory shouldn't be the site of some brat teenager's 16th birthday! Or a hen night (bachelorette party) oh, the indignity of penis shaped candles on Lord Horatio Nelson's hallowed ship!

But then they have a quote from the man who books the parties saying that they are very selective and have strict rules regarding allowing parties on the ship. Most of these are to do with preserving the ship's condition, though they say they are also careful about choosing what to allow on the ship. They even specifically rule out 18th birthday parties and the aforementioned hen nights. It's nice when conservative rage bait pieces helpfully debunk themselves.

But my friends, this is the best punchline to this article:

You can have a party around Nelson's crypt! He's entombed in the black marble sarcophagus above the plinth in the centre. They even gave him lovely lesbian lighting.