No. IX
HMS Victory
1:98 · First-rate ship of the line, launched 1765
HMS Victory is a three-masted first-rate warship of 104 guns, 69.34 m long and 15.80 m wide. She was launched by the Royal Navy on 7 May 1765. She cost £63,176 and 3 shillings to build, about £7.31 million today. About 6,000 trees were felled for her. Roughly 90% of her timber is oak, with the rest elm, pine, fir and lignum vitae.
She is remembered above all as Lord Nelson’s flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar on 21 October 1805, where the British fleet defeated the combined French and Spanish fleets.
At Trafalgar, Nelson sent his fleet against the enemy line in two columns at right angles to it, rather than in a parallel line of battle. This made signalling simpler and gave his ships more targets. The battle was his greatest victory, though he was killed in the fighting. The French commander, Admiral Pierre-Charles de Villeneuve, was captured, and the Spanish admiral Federico Gravina later died of his wounds.
About the model
Denis’s Victory shows the ship’s distinctive yellow-and-black banded gun decks, her boats stowed amidships and her full standing rigging.