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Visit of HMS Victory - 2015


Iceman 29

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I had the great pleasure to visit the Victory in full restoration during September 2015 in its dry dock, the ship was in great need of it, the percentage of authentic pieces decreases from decade to decade as the work necessary to maintain it in its state.

 

I recommend this visit if you are passionate about this kind of ship. Luckily the weather was nice, which allowed me to take pictures inside without flash.

 

I think that these pictures will be useful for some people.

 

Let's take some pictures:

 

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Then the visit ended reluctantly, I would have stayed for hours on my own if I had been alone ... But we'll go back, for sure, now that the work is finished and he has regained all his masts.

 

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Sad thing is, VICTORY is the only ship left in the RN in which I served!  All of the others have either been sold, scrapped or sunk as targets.  But I had 2 periods in VICTORY is a young officer  holding between appointments.  I had a great time.

 

The refit is coming on well though there remains a huge amount still to do.  i attended a presentation a couple of months back given by the restoration project manager explaining what they are now doing and where they plan to go next.  I understand that the scaffolding that now covers the port side is being made wheelchair friendly so that everyone can get a closer view of the work in progress.

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Thank you for the photos. Have started the Heller 1/100th scale a while back. Had to set her aside to do some commission work and haven't been able to get back to it. Other life issues cropped up.

 

All The Best,

Ron VanDerwarker

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15 hours ago, f111guru said:

Thank you for the photos. Have started the Heller 1/100th scale a while back. Had to set her aside to do some commission work and haven't been able to get back to it. Other life issues cropped up.

 

All The Best,

Ron VanDerwarker

 

Hello Ron, 

 

Me too, had started it and went up to 70% on the ship I was sailing on in the 1990s, but it didn't stand up well to air travel home when the tanker was sold . 

So I bought a complete box, I'm going to build it again with the new box, some PE, and 3D.

 

I'll just have to find the time, because I have several projects on the way.

 

I hope you'll find time to finish it, it's a soothing hobby.

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On 1/19/2021 at 7:04 AM, Iceman 29 said:

 

Hello Ron, 

 

Me too, had started it and went up to 70% on the ship I was sailing on in the 1990s, but it didn't stand up well to air travel home when the tanker was sold . 

So I bought a complete box, I'm going to build it again with the new box, some PE, and 3D.

 

I'll just have to find the time, because I have several projects on the way.

 

I hope you'll find time to finish it, it's a soothing hobby.

Hello Pascal,

Best of luck on restarting your HMS Victory. 3D printing is something I am sure to venture in this year. I'm primarily into 48th scale aircraft but have in my stash another full Heller HMS Victory, USS Constitution from Revell. I may purchase the Revell reissue of the Cutty Sark.

 

A few years back my wife and I were in Boston Mass and visited the USS Constitution and too many pictures. I'm amazed as to the workmanship that goes into making these vessels.

Again Best of Luck

 

Ron VanDerwarker

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  • 1 month later...
  • 10 months later...

HMS Victory conservation project to spend £35m on renovation:

 

A £35 million conservation project to renovate HMS Victory including replacing rotting planks has been announced on the 100th anniversary of the warship being brought into dry dock.

Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson’s flagship was brought into dry dock 2 at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard 100 years ago, where it has remained as the world’s oldest commissioned warship and the flagship of the First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff.......

 

More here: 

 

https://www.windsorobserver.co.uk/news/19838013.hms-victory-conservation-project-spend-35m-renovation/

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  • 6 months later...
8 minutes ago, Bandsaw Steve said:

35 million pounds worth of repairs. No complaints from me, but I wonder how much it cost to build her back in the day? 🤔

 

The librarian in me had to research that. In 1755 she cost £63,176 to build from 2000 oak trees, 60 acres of woodland!

 

A site that calculated historical price equivalents reckoned that to be £12,382,496 at today's rates.

 

I wonder how much it would cost to build a new one though? Things have changed a lot in the dockyards since 1755. Oak is expensive now, H&S legislation would slow things down, modern machinery would speed things up, lack of skilled men would slow it down, labour is probably more expensive...

 

 

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On 1/16/2021 at 9:29 PM, Iceman 29 said:

the work necessary to maintain it

 

Thanks for the excellent photos. This is a very useful walkaround and is much appreciated.

 

Be careful calling Victory 'it', her ghosts will haunt you. :ghost:

🤣

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Wow! Thanks for that @Bertie McBoatface

 

Makes me feel like I should have been a bit more diligent and looked it up myself. Interesting though; on face value it’s going to cost roughly 555 times more to repair and conserve than it did to build. 
 

Is anyone else not convinced about the quality of modern money? 

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5 minutes ago, Bandsaw Steve said:

Wow! Thanks for that @Bertie McBoatface

 

Makes me feel like I should have been a bit more diligent and looked it up myself. Interesting though; on face value it’s going to cost roughly 555 times more to repair and conserve than it did to build. 
 

Is anyone else not convinced about the quality of modern money? 

 

What about the quality of 18th century ships? It's amazing that a wooden ship lasted this long even with the attention lavished in the last 100 years. Before that she was afloat full time.

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HMS Victory is a Triggers Broom

I made visits every second year from 2000.

On each visit workmen were replacing sections of both the hull planking and some of the interior. One year one of the main staircases was being replaced with a new one

The lower masts are steel tubes. Instead of stopping at the orlop they go right through the hull into the dry dock base. They are holding Victory up

At least 2/3 of the cannon are fibre glass replicas

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The more I get into boat building the more I am awed at the size and number of not only trees for this but also the tools. The size of tree needed to dig out of the ground and size of saw needed to cut those hanging knees from the base is jaw dropping.

 

That would be a major source of cost right there - not knees specifically - but the scale of tools needed to make parts for this vessel.

 

Out of interest, does anyone else follow the Sampson Boat Co channel on YouTube? Leo there is "only" rebuilding a 47ft wooden yacht but the scale of the chunks of timber is eye-opening, and it's not until you're trying to actually do something with a sizeable lump of wood and wondering if whatever tool you have is actually big enough to go all the way through it that the realization starts to dawn.

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I went past it a couple of weeks ago, to be honest didn’t look like a good time to visit.  Clearly the masts are still missing but there was a lot of scaffolding and polythene sheet around it.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 7/29/2022 at 2:30 PM, Bertie McBoatface said:

 

The librarian in me had to research that. In 1755 she cost £63,176 to build from 2000 oak trees, 60 acres of woodland!

 

A site that calculated historical price equivalents reckoned that to be £12,382,496 at today's rates.

 

I wonder how much it would cost to build a new one though? Things have changed a lot in the dockyards since 1755. Oak is expensive now, H&S legislation would slow things down, modern machinery would speed things up, lack of skilled men would slow it down, labour is probably more expensive...

 

 

 

Hope this isn't too dull to read, but it's a bit more complicated than that. Strictly speaking you're correct in saying £63,000 of 1755 money is now worth £10 million or so in 2022. However, that's not that helpful when you want to know how much something “cost" society in the economic context of the time. Measuring the relative values of large government projects such as this requires accounting not only for the relative growth of the economy, but also things like relative labour values. You need to measure the economic cost of a project as a percentage of the economy at the time. So using some rather more complex calculators the project to build Victory in 1755 is equivalent to a modern government project worth around £1.43 Billion. And that only accounts for the construction costs of the ship itself, not the associated government spending required to deliver that construction project such as the costs of associated infrastructure, project administration, etc. Building a ship like the Victory was a huge undertaking for an early-industrial economy. Constructing her was the equivalent of building a modern supercarrier, and as such carried equivalent costs!

 

The modern HMS Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers have just cost us £6.1 Billion each, so in some respects you can argue Victory was quite a bargain!

 

Will

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1 hour ago, Killingholme said:

 

Hope this isn't too dull to read, but it's a bit more complicated than that. Strictly speaking you're correct in saying £63,000 of 1755 money is now worth £10 million or so in 2022. However, that's not that helpful when you want to know how much something “cost" society in the economic context of the time. Measuring the relative values of large government projects such as this requires accounting not only for the relative growth of the economy, but also things like relative labour values. You need to measure the economic cost of a project as a percentage of the economy at the time. So using some rather more complex calculators the project to build Victory in 1755 is equivalent to a modern government project worth around £1.43 Billion. And that only accounts for the construction costs of the ship itself, not the associated government spending required to deliver that construction project such as the costs of associated infrastructure, project administration, etc. Building a ship like the Victory was a huge undertaking for an early-industrial economy. Constructing her was the equivalent of building a modern supercarrier, and as such carried equivalent costs!

 

The modern HMS Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers have just cost us £6.1 Billion each, so in some respects you can argue Victory was quite a bargain!

 

Will


Indeed. All these historical price comparisons are tosh. What do you use for your ‘basket of goods’ as an inflation measure. Wages? Who’s wages? Price of bread? Price of a country house? It’s just a bit of fun really. 

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