| jowady | 12 May 2016 8:03 a.m. PST |
I guess that the good news is that there is a plan to save her, it's going to be expensive though. link |
| MajorB | 12 May 2016 8:07 a.m. PST |
They had the same problem with the Cutty Sark. A similar solution would probably be advisable. |
Shagnasty  | 12 May 2016 9:08 a.m. PST |
Sorry to hear it. They are having similar problems with the USS Texas for metal rather than wood. Visiting the Victory was one of the high spots of my rip to the UK in the last century, even without her bow. |
 Yellow Admiral | 12 May 2016 10:07 a.m. PST |
They should quit mincing about with reinforcements and just convert her to an aircraft carrier. - Ix |
| Winston Smith | 12 May 2016 10:29 a.m. PST |
Started in 1759, launched in 1765.
Made out of wood.
Wow.
I wonder just how much of the original is left, and how much longer it can be preserved. I bet its main threat for in the future will be budget cuts by a nation and government that will no longer care. |
| DeRuyter | 12 May 2016 10:42 a.m. PST |
The downside of sitting in a cradle at dry dock versus in the water. USS Constitution, HMS Trincomalee and HMS Unicorn all suffer from old wooden ships being in the water and require expensive upkeep to be sure, but falling apart under their own weight isn't one of them. |
 Tacitus | 12 May 2016 10:49 a.m. PST |
Glad to hear they have the money and are using it to fix her. I will never forget my visit to the Victory. |
| jowady | 12 May 2016 11:27 a.m. PST |
Cutty Sark burned. Texas suffers, as does Olympia, from the fact that they should have been drydocked and worked on years back (Olympia hasn't been out of the water since 1945). Constellation was almost sinking at her moorings before they did an extensive refit on her (luckily they also decided to drop the fiction that she was Truxtun's Frigate and instead now portray her as the last sailing sloop of war in the US Navy). All in all what it says is that preserving ships is a costly business and you delay repairs and refits at your peril. Constitution which is currently undergoing a refit, does so every few years. Since it is never as cheap to do tomorrow as it is today on this sort of thing you wonder how much would have been saved if they had done this study years ago.
I wonder just how much of the original is left, and how much longer it can be preserved.
Estimates that I have seen are something like 10% for Victory and 15-20% for Constitution. |
| MajorB | 12 May 2016 1:20 p.m. PST |
Cutty Sark burned. Yes, but it has now been fully restored and sits suspended 6ft above the floor of a dry dock in Greenwich. This takes all the weight off the keel and means the ship should survive for many years into the future. It's the same problem with the Victory(all the weight is on the keel ) and the obvious solution is to the same for her. |
| Mark Barker | 12 May 2016 1:53 p.m. PST |
Classic example this of a newspaper pepping a story up a bit for headline effect (and the Daily Telegraph at that) but the basics are true.
Which is what happens when you take an object designed to be supported by the water and with a design life of 40 years and stick it in the open air for a nigh on a century.
YouTube link
This video (which I might have posted before) shows the LIDAR scan they did of Victory to start the project off. What has been found is that the existing supports are not in the best places to hold the structure, hence the new braces which they will install. In effect, as she is largely supported on the keel the two halves of the structure are 'falling outwards' slowly, if that makes sense.
All of which is such a major newsworthy shock that the project engineer told us all about it in a "walk under HMS Victory" tour of the dry-dock last September !
It is good to see the basic structure getting the attention it deserves. … and please not the Cutty Sark solution, it is now completely impossible to appreciate the lines of the ship from outside and it looks ghastly |
| Mark Barker | 12 May 2016 2:03 p.m. PST |
When you visit Victory you quickly appreciate that the lower you go in the ship, the more is "original" – i.e. 1765. That includes the whole of the keel (apart from a section unkindly removed by the Luftwaffe), the lower gun-deck and many of the major lower structural timbers – rather more that 10% I'd say, and it is really easy to put your hand on a bit of elm or oak that you know was at Trafalgar when you walk round her. The need to continuously be open to the public and to be in decent external shape for 2005 limited what could be done then, but talking to the project team last year you definitely got the impression that they had got the money and the determination to do a good job. Mark Barker
The Inshore Squadron |
| GeoffQRF | 13 May 2016 2:12 a.m. PST |
"n the Victory conservation project, significance is the critically important consideration when making decisions. In fact, we don't talk about whether or not a piece of the ship is ‘original' because that concept doesn't really mean anything for a very simple reason: HMS Victory is biodegradable. The ship is built from timber and oakum and canvas. When exposed to the elements these materials decay, a fact known all too well by the shipwrights who built and repaired the ship. By the time of Trafalgar, a ship like Victory was expected to last perhaps 8 or 9 years before needing very significant repair. " The last 'Great Repair' was started in 1955 and only completed in 2002. |
| Old Wolfman | 13 May 2016 7:32 a.m. PST |
Here's hoping they can do it. |
looks at some new terrain products, which use space age technology!