Victory!
On October 3rd, 1744, a British fleet - coming from Spain - enters the English Channel...:
The British are returning from an action in which they had freed Admiral Sir Charles Hardy in the naval battle on the Tagus (near Lisbon), who had been blocked with a small detachment by the Spanish Navy in the Tagus estuary...:
The fleet is commanded by Admiral Sir John Balchen...
...who has hoisted his flag on the newest and largest ship, the HMS "Victory", which was only put into service in 1737...:
As the British enter the Channel and set course for their home base of Portsmouth, a severe hurricane hits.
The storm drives the ships apart, it is very difficult to maintain at least occasional visual contact with each other.
On the evening of October 4, 1744, HMS "Victory" is seen one last time near the Channel Islands...:
The next morning the ship with 1,150 souls on board disappeared without a trace!
It is generally assumed that the flagship fell victim to the hurricane with man and mouse during the night and sank...:
This assumption will only become certain 250 years later, when wreck divers find the remains of the "Victory" at the bottom of the English Channel...:
The wooden parts of the ship are either completely rotten at this time or - due to the strong currents in the canal - washed over by sand - but the "Victory" can be clearly identified by the undamaged cannon barrels of its guns...:
All gun barrels found on the ground were still loaded, i. H. there were lumps of caked powder and iron balls in the barrels!
Some guns have since been recovered from the seabed...
... restored and exhibit them at Portsmouth today...:
The British immediately set about building a second, larger and even more artillery HMS "Victory"!
This ship is luckier than its unlucky predecessor!
This second "Victory" became famous as the flagship of Admiral Horato Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar on October 21, 1805!
In the final stages of the battle, HMS "Victory" lay side by side with the French battleship "Le Redoutable" - and the heavy British guns reduced the desperately defending French ship to a wreck...:
The musket ball of a French sniper on board the "Redoutable" hit the British Admiral Horatio Nelson, who was on the quarterdeck of the "Victory", close to the heart.
Nelson was hurriedly carried below deck...
...but the wound proved fatal, the admiral died shortly afterwards!
The British kept this second "Victory" as a reminder of the naval victory of Trafalgar and the Admiral Nelson as a museum ship in Portsmouth to this day...:
The place where Admiral Nelson died is designed as a simple memorial, and on each anniversary of Nelson's death, this site is given a special adornment by naval cadets at Portsmouth...:
Since then, no ship in the Royal Navy has borne the name "Victory"!
Only ONE part of this second "Victory" is no longer in Great Britain:
In the 1880s, Queen Victoria had a valuable desk made from an oak beam from the ship and gave it to the American people as a gift...:
Since then, this desk has adorned the "Oval Office", the representative office of the US Presidents in the White House in Washington (the actual Presidential Office is elsewhere!) and has been used by all US Presidents ever since!
The honorable wood was also used by the "stable genius" as a writing desk...
... and one is surprised that it didn't turn completely crooked with disgust!
