HMS Victory: The Ship That Carried Nelson Into Legend

Six Thousand Oaks and Six Years

HMS Victory was ordered in 1758 during the Seven Years' War and built at Chatham Dockyard to a design by the naval architect Sir Thomas Slade, using around six thousand oak trees over nearly six years of construction before her launch on 7 May 1765.

Peace meant she initially sat idle in ordinary, not commissioned until March 1778, when France's entry into the American Revolutionary War brought her into active service.

Decades of War Before Trafalgar

Victory first saw combat at the First Battle of Ushant in 1778 under Admiral Augustus Keppel, and went on to serve at the Second Battle of Ushant in 1781, the relief of Gibraltar during the Great Siege of 1782, and the Battle of Cape St Vincent in 1797, before serving in the Mediterranean under Vice-Admiral Samuel Hood during the French Revolutionary War, a properly extensive combat record built up long before her most famous day.

Nelson Hoists His Flag

Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson hoisted his flag aboard Victory on 18 May 1803, making the 104-gun ship the flagship of the Mediterranean Fleet at the very moment Britain needed its most brilliant naval commander at the height of his powers.

Trafalgar and Nelson's Death

At the Battle of Trafalgar on 21 October 1805, Victory led the British fleet to a decisive victory over the combined French and Spanish fleets, a battle that secured British naval supremacy for a century to come.

During the engagement, Nelson was struck by a musket ball that lodged in his spine, and he died aboard his flagship at half past four that afternoon, a loss this account records with the solemnity it has earned as one of the most mourned deaths in British history, immortalised ever since in the story of a victory won at the cost of the commander who achieved it.

A Baltic Flagship and a Floating Prison

After extensive repairs, Victory continued in active service, serving as Admiral Saumarez's flagship in the Baltic between 1808 and 1812, supporting evacuations during the Peninsular War, and later serving as a floating depot and prison ship, a far less glamorous chapter for a vessel that had carried Nelson to his greatest victory.

Saved From the Breakers

Threatened with scrapping in 1831, Victory was saved by public outcry, and by the 1830s had become a popular attraction, with Princess Victoria visiting in 1833.

By the early twentieth century she had deteriorated badly, but a restoration campaign beginning in 1922 placed her in dry dock at Portsmouth, where she remains to this day, subject to ongoing conservation work running through to 2032 to combat rot, deathwatch beetle and structural decay.

Still in Commission

Today, HMS Victory remains the world's oldest naval vessel still in commission, serving since October 2012 as the flagship of the First Sea Lord while doubling as one of Britain's most visited museum ships, allowing visitors to walk the very decks where Nelson won his final and most famous battle.