History - How HMS Victory almost in no way made it to the Battle of Trafalgar

World one of the best History - How HMS Victory almost in no way made it to the Battle of Trafalgar

Victory Model

On 21 October 1805, HMS Victory sailed into the records of British naval triumphs as the flagship of Admiral Lord Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar. However, if it hadn’t been for the sweaty nightmares of a Chatham carpenter, the ship may want to have joined the less glorious rollcall of tremendous British cockups.

Inside Victory

Victory used to be the satisfaction of Chatham dockyard in Kent, the greatest warship constructed for the Royal Navy. However, on 7 May 1765, shipwright Hartly Larkin realised, tossing in his mattress in the small hours, with VIPs from the authorities and navy invited on board for a high-quality ceremony later that day, there was a calamitous error: Victory was once too vast to match via the timber gates of the dock to be launched into the Medway.

Victory Wood Model

“At best, the gates would have gouged lumps out of the timbers – at worst, if she had stuck in the dock entrance, and sat there unsupported as the tide fell underneath her, the keel ought to have broken,” stated naval historian Brian Lavery, who has been gaining knowledge of the episode as curator of the 250th anniversary exhibition, with well-knownshows at Chatham Historic Dockyard, along with the bullet that killed Nelson, loaned by way of the Queen.

Going to play with Ocean.

“The cables were constant to haul her out into river, but they would have had no potential of dragging her back into the dock. She would have been destroyed, and the usable timbers recycled.”