00:00HMS Victory was made famous by her role as Admiral Lord Nelson's flagship at the Battle
00:07of Trafalgar in 1805. She survived that battle, it was obviously an overwhelming victory for
00:12the British fleet, but Lord Nelson did perish on board. She has been preserved ever since
00:19through luck, sometimes not so much judgement, and therefore she's with us today. It was
00:25discovered through shipwright surveys that the ship was degrading, water was getting
00:29into the structure, it was allowing rot to grow and develop, and then as the timber degraded
00:35it became food for death watch beetle, and then over time that has just been eroding
00:40the structure of the ship. And so we've embarked on this project to essentially remove the
00:46external rotten timber, dry out the structure, and then we will replank and ensure that we
00:53stop water ingressing in future. We're at the stage of the project now where we've removed
00:57a lot of the planking from the outside of the ship, which was rotten and allowing water
01:02in, and we've uncovered a lot of damaged frames. So the next stage of the project is to work
01:10away fore-to-aft, removing the damaged frames, carrying out repairs where possible, and we'll
01:15be using oak planking and traditional methods to reinstate the ship to how she was during
01:21the Battle of Trafalgar.
01:27When we were removing the planking we were coming across tools, notes, history. It's
01:33quite fun from the previous work done across the last 100, 150 years really. The size of
01:38the timber we're working with is, it's fun, it's interesting, it adds another level of
01:44complexity to it. It's definitely a great honour to work here.
01:48We are currently looking at a 12-year programme. This much structure has not been removed from
01:55the ship and replaced since 1814. This conservation project is the largest conservation project
02:02in Europe after Notre Dame. I think what we're doing here massively adds to the visitor experience
02:08because I think it's such a unique visual experience. They will not see this in their
02:14lifetime again. Seeing the underlying structure of victory and seeing this scale of work is
02:18a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
02:22We think there's probably about 7-14% of the ship dates to the time of Nelson. What I think
02:28is really important to stress is that the ship is made of timber. Throughout her active
02:35service life she would have been repaired, refitted, elements changed, but the more we
02:43conserve the more our visitors can be assured that they're walking in the footsteps of those
02:4819th century sailors.
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