As the flagship of Nelson at Trafalgar, and the sole survivor, anywhere in the world, of those ships of the line on which Britain’s naval supremacy was founded, HMS Victory well deserves a book to herself. The present volume, written for the general reader as well as the specialist, and illustrated both with contemporary paintings and modern photographs, devotes little space to the battles in which she took part (she was in commission at sea for only 18 years) but a great deal more to the details of her construction and of the numerous alterations made during her protracted career. Her preservation was not, at first, a matter of patriotic sentiment but of the Admiralty’s thrift, her timbers being unusually sound because they had had time to season properly while she was being built. Although, by the end of the nineteenth century, she had declined to the status of a tender, the anniversary of Trafalgar in 1905 eventually led to moves for her permanent preservation. It was decided to restore her, as nearly as possible, to her appearance in 1805, though the book makes it clear just what a small part of the ship actually survives from Nelson’s day. This reconstruction, which began in 1922, is expected to be complete by 2005, except that even then no sails will be carried.
The first part of the book gives a detailed account of the progress of the restoration, together with appendices on such specialised aspects as sails, rigging, anchors and boats. An example of the minuteness of the detail is the table of the number of death‐watch beetles reported in each year from 1954 to 1981! The large format of the book is dictated by its second part, consisting of a series of equally detailed drawings showing every part of the Victory’s construction and fittings. For instance, one of them depicts every plank on one side of the ship. They are not merely of technical interest: in describing the plan of the crew’s sleeping arrangements, the author points out that the 14in. of width allowed for each sailor’s hammock should be compared with the 16in. of a typical coathanger. I did feel that it was a pity that these splendid drawings were not in every case accompanied by sufficient explanatory text (the author and illustrator might better have taken their cue from the captions to the cutaway drawings that used to appear in The Illustrated London News). Space might have been found for this by reducing the amount of detail in the earlier text ‐ did they really need to include a verbatim transcript of a report about modern fire precautions? On the credit side, there is a substantial glossary of technical terms, a short bibliography and an index. This definitive work will be valuable both as a study of a unique example of the marine architecture of the days of sail, and as a memorial of the Royal Navy’s most decisive battle.
