"Color of the HMS Victory gun decks?" Topic

Hey all!

Okay, I am finding contrasting info, so I was hoping someone here could help…what are the colors of the "walls" of the different gun decks of the Victory?

Thanks!

Wow, I was just on that ship in May. Black and dark brown are what I recall, but I was not really paying attention to the walls. My 5 year old son's idea of seeing the ship was to try to run through. Fastest tour of the ship I have ever had. 20 minutes :-)

Weren't they painted red so the blood didn't show?
Or is that only a myth?

OTOH, if you mean the outside then:

Hey!

Nope, meant the inside. In most photos they all seem to be white, but the a few turn up that are yellow, and I cannot figure out if that is a proper gun deck (they look like the largest guns) or not.

I don't think they were red, unless they reprinted them the wrong colors later…?

Oh, and is the top deck wood lighter than the wood in the rest of the ship?

This model shows the gun decks..
link

This model shows the gun decks..

But how do we know that the model is accurate?

link

I understand the restoration to be accurate.

The one really good picture of one of the gundecks I found they are definitely painted white. Sections appear yellow I'm pretty sure that color shift is from the yellow light coming from the lanterns.

link

Not necessarily. In the model linked to by Pauls Bods the middle and lower gun decks have walls painted white, whereas in this picture the lower gun deck appears to be natural wood:

Splendid! Two pictures of the lower gun deck, one appears to have walls painted white the other they appear to be natural wood! Take your pick …

I vaguely remember it was painted in a light blue (kind of an off white, lead white I think) to give light reflected through open portholes.

You have to remember that HMS Victory has been restored a number of times so the current paint is modern. It was also common to have the interiors of ships a different colour during peacetime and this would explain the light blue.

Traditional sources all maintain that during the Napoleonic Wars and at Trafalgar the interior gun decks were mainly painted a reddish brown supposedly to hide the blood. Fittings and iron work would be a shiny black.

Here are some pictures, The first ones are from Sheperd Paine's famous diorama of the h gun deck of HMS Victory

The last one is another part of HMS Victory preserved as at Trafalgar

Here is a link to Holystoning the deck. Which if I'm not mistaken from much reading tended to make oak a light brown almost white color.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holystone

The deckes are always natural wood – because the sailors spend all day sanding them with a holy stone…

I agree with the holy stone making them light brown. I also remember reading that the decks were frequently washed down with salt water as a means of keeping them properly and consistently of the same mosture content, as well as the salt helping to preserve them. If the wood was allowed to dry out, it would shrink and try to warp. Changing the mosture content back and forth would also work nails and treenails loose and move boards against each other.

The hull interiors of Royal Navy ships were supposed to be dull red (possibly a red lead or oxide) from about 1780 to 1813, when they were officially altered to a light yellow ochre/buff colour, although there seems to be evidence that this had been a trend since around 1807. See Frank Howard's "Sailing Ships of War" (Conway 1979) and Robert Gardener's "Frigates of the Napoleonic Wars" (Chatham 2000).

There were two exceptions: the hold and the orlop deck were whitewashed, presumably to maximise the light as they were below the waterline and had no portholes.