HMS Victory (1737)

'Loss of HMS 'Victory', 4 October 1744' by Peter Monamy
History
Great Britain
Name:	HMS Victory
Ordered:	11 September 1733
Builder:	Portsmouth Dockyard
Laid down:	1726
Launched:	23 February 1737
Fate:	Wrecked, 4/5 October 1744
General characteristics [1]
Class and type:	1733 proposals 100-gun first rate ship of the line
Tons burthen:	1921 bm
Length:	174 ft (53 m) gundeck
Beam:	50 ft (15 m)
Draught:	18 ft (5.5 m)
Depth of hold:	20 ft 6 in (6.25 m)
Sail plan:	Full rigged ship
Complement:	Around 900
Armament:	100 guns: Gundeck: 28 × 42 pdrs Middle gundeck: 28 × 24 pdrs Upper gundeck: 28 × 12 pdrs Quarterdeck: 12 × 6 pdrs Forecastle: 4 × 6 pdrs

For the museum ship at Portsmouth on which Admiral Nelson was killed during the Battle of Trafalgar, see HMS Victory.

HMS Victory was a 100-gun first-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, built to the dimensions of the 1733 proposals of the 1719 Establishment at Portsmouth Dockyard, and launched on 23 February 1737.^[1]

Construction

A small number of the timbers used in the construction of Victory were taken from the remains of the previous HMS Victory, which had caught fire and been burnt to the waterline in February 1721 whilst having weed burned from her bottom (in a process called "breaming"). Officially a rebuild of the previous vessel, the new Victory was built by master shipwright Joseph Allin and cost £38,239 to assemble, plus £12,652 fitting as a flagship. Launched in 1737 she became the flagship of the Channel Fleet under Sir John Norris following completion in 1740. She was the last British First Rate to be armed entirely with bronze cannon.^[2]

The Victory was "a high-sided ship for her draught and this was believed to have made her leewardly and to have led to her loss".^[3] The term "leewardly" means she had a tendency to be pushed to leeward (down wind) more than normal when sailing with the wind on or forward of the beam, increasing the risk of being driven ashore. A plan of the ship reproduced in Howard and an extant contemporary model also show her with four rows of lights (stern galleries), three open balconies along her stern, and four quarter galleries, one more of each than was usual for an English three-decker.^[4][5] These expansive features improved her internal capacity and conditions for the crew, but were heavy enough to compromise her stability in rough weather.^[4] Their addition to the ship reflected a long-running dispute between Jacob Acworth, the Surveyor of the Navy and representative of the Admiralty Board, and master shipwright Allin who had carriage of the actual construction of the ship. Acworth had instructed Allin that Admiralty required the ship's upper works to be "low and snug." Allin, jealous of his prerogatives as a shipwright, refused to adhere to this direction and instead built a particularly large and roomy craft. The completed ship was revealed to be so incompetent a sailer that she required several refits before she passed her sea trials.^[4]

Victory carried 28 guns on each of her gundecks, but with an additional set of unused gunports to the aft of the middle deck. She was the last Royal Navy three-decker to carry bronze cannons; after her loss the Navy switched instead to cheaper iron-made weapons for all first- and second-rate ships.

Loss

She was wrecked with the loss of her entire crew while returning to England as the flagship of Admiral Sir John Balchen after relieving Sir Charles Hardy, who had been blockaded in the Tagus estuary by the French Brest fleet. As the fleet reached the English Channel on 3 October 1744 it was scattered by a large storm. At around 15:30 on 4 October, the ships accompanying Victory lost sight of her near the Channel Islands. For over 260 years she was believed to have been wrecked during the night on Black Rock just off the Casquets, with the loss of her entire complement.

Frigates were dispatched across the English Channel to search for her where she had last been seen wallowing on the horizon on 4 October. Eventually, Captain Thomas Grenville of HMS Falkland landed at Guernsey in the Channel Islands to provision, and there heard from locals that wreckage and part of a topmast had washed up on the island's shores. Further investigation proved that the wreckage had indeed come from Victory, which was believed to have run into the Casquets, a group of rocks nearby. Other wreckage was washed up on Jersey and Alderney, whose inhabitants had heard distress guns the night before the wreck but were unable to provide aid in the severe storm. No trace of any of the 1,150 sailors aboard Victory was found until the wreck was discovered in 2008.

Discovery

On 1 February 2009, the Associated Press reported that Odyssey Marine Exploration, based in Tampa, Florida, United States, claimed to have found the wreck in May 2008, and has recovered two of the one hundred bronze cannons.^[6] Located in the Western Approaches between England and France, as a military wreck she legally remains the property of the British Government under the laws of marine salvage.^[6] The wreck was found "more than 80 km (43 nm) from where anybody would have thought it went down", according to Odyssey Marine Exploration CEO Gregg Stemm,^[7] and 100 m (330 ft) deep,^[6] meaning that the vessel had not foundered on the Casquets as had been surmised, but lay approximately at latitude 49°42.5' N and longitude 3°33.3' W. The team announced their findings publicly on 2 February and stated that they were negotiating with the British government over the wreckage.^[2] On 26 March 2009, the TV show Treasure Quest, which had followed the company's ship Odyssey Explorer exploring several different shipwreck sites, aired two hours of footage of the Odyssey Explorer's initial findings of the ship. The show included footage of the Odyssey Explorer's crew finding a 42 pounder cannon that identified the wreck as the Victory. The crew raised a 42 pounder cannon and a 12 pounder cannon which are now on display at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. In 2011 a Dutch salvage company was caught having illegally looted a cannon from the wreck site^[8].

In January 2012 it was reported that the remains of HMS Victory are to be raised from the sea bed. The wreck is to be handed over to the Maritime Heritage Foundation, which is expected to employ Odyssey Marine Exploration to carry out the recovery.^[9] The terms of the contract with Odyssey Marine Exploration remain controversial, with concerns over, "allowing foreign investors to profit from the property, grave and memorial of Royal Navy personnel".^[10].

Possible treasure

There has been research which has backed up anecdotal evidence that there is a possibility that Victory was carrying significant quantities of gold and silver when she sank which could be worth hundreds of millions of pounds. Lisbon was the bullion capital of Europe and the Mediterranean world and, following the blockade of the river Tagus, there would have been a backlog of bullion to transport to England and Royal Navy ships were often used to safely transport private coinage^[11][12]. In addition to this, admiral Sir John Balchin had recently captured six prize ships^[13] and could also have been carrying their assets. The Amsterdamsche Courant of 18/19 November 1744 describes how a huge sum of money was being carried by the flagship when she foundered: “People will have it that on board of the Victory was a sum of 400,000 pounds sterling that it had brought from Lisbon for our merchants.” This would equate to approximately 4 tons of gold coins^[14][15].

Notes

See also

Treasure Quest (TV series)

References

• Colledge, J. J.; Warlow, Ben (2006) [1969]. Ships of the Royal Navy: The Complete Record of all Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy (Rev. ed.). London: Chatham Publishing. ISBN 978-1-86176-281-8. OCLC 67375475.
• Lavery, Brian (2003) The Ship of the Line - Volume 1: The development of the battlefleet 1650-1850. Conway Maritime Press. ISBN 0-85177-252-8.
• Winfield, Rif (2007) British Warships in the Age of Sail 1714-1792: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates. Seaforth Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84415-700-6.
• "The Life of Sir John Balchen" (PDF). The Lives of British Admirals, 1787. Retrieved 9 November 2007.
• Howard, Dr. F. (1979). Sailing Ships of War 1400-1860. (London:Conway Maritime Press). ISBN 0-85177-138-6
• Winfield, Rif (2010). First Rate: The Greatest Warships of the Age of Sail. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-1-59114-264-5.

External links

• Press release on discovery from Odyssey Marine Exploration
• Video of the discovery from Treasure Quest on Discovery Channel
• The wreck of HMS Victory on www.wrecksite.eu

Coordinates: 49°42.5′N 3°33.3′W / 49.7083°N 3.5550°W / 49.7083; -3.5550