Victory: From Fighting the Armada to Trafalgar and Beyond

Earlier this year I was able to satisfy a long-held personal ambition by attending a formal dinner on board HMS Victory. Seated with our backs to the huge cannon below decks, we ate our meals where, in bygone years, ordinary crewmen had eaten theirs. To be surrounded by so much history was quite incredible.HMS Victory is famous for many different reasons - most of which relate to the Battle of Trafalgar and the death of Nelson. There is, however, so much more that goes with the name of the oldest commissioned warship in the world. What is often overlooked is that this magnificent first-rate ship-of-the-line is the seventh Royal Navy ship to bear that name - and I must confess to being previously unaware of so many of those predecessors.The first Victory was purchased in 1560 and carried 42 guns. Rebuilt in 1586 (59 guns), she became the flagship of Sir John Hawkins during the battle against the Spanish Armada of 1588 and was eventually broken up in 1608. I will spare the reader from further brief details of each of these seven ships - except to say that another to bear this illustrious name was also a 100-gun first-rate ship and was originally rebuilt from the frames of HMS Royal James before being completed at Portsmouth in 1737. As is so movingly recounted in this excellent work, this particular HMS Victory was wrecked on the Casquets in 1744 with the loss of all 1,400 on board - including as many as 100 Midshipmen, several of whom came from the noblest families. Regarded as a national tragedy, a period of national mourning was observed before serious questions began to emerge...By producing a single work with the common theme of `HMS Victory' in which we find an exceedingly well researched history for each of these very different ships, leading maritime historians Iain Ballantyne and Jonathan Eastland have provided a fascinating book in which their skills are thoroughly exposed for the experts they are. Even after they finally arrive at the most famous `Victory' of all, they do not stop at Trafalgar - as have so many other writers. Instead they complete the story of that ship by including how she was instrumental in foiling Napoleon's plans to conquer Russia and even go on to describe exactly how she was saved for the nation.Altogether, a most complete work from which I suspect most, if not all, readers will learn something.NM