HMS Victory

Thames Valley Centre arranged a visit to Portsmouth Dockyard for Sunday 18^th August, and as we had some 21 Big Healeys booked in for the day, the Dockyard allowed us to park up alongside the quay of HMS. We started with our own boat tour of Portsmouth Harbour – to learn that the dock area had been vastly enlarged by manual mud digging by Napoleonic prisoners of war, which is how Whale Island was formed. Our tour covered history from today’s Destroyers , to history of wooden ships in the presence of HMS Victory, first launched in 1765, a ship with over 100 guns that had fought in The American War of Independence, The French Revolution and finally in the Napoleonic war, where it was Nelson’s flagship. We also visited the new museum of The Mary Rose, which was Henry VIII flagship , launched back in 1511. The museum identified the hard life of living and fighting on a Tudor ship together with many examples of the tactics and manner of naval warfare as was followed in Henry VIII’s time.