Saturday, January 9, 2010

HMS Victory.

This is coolbert:

Here with some interesting factoids concerning HMS Victory. The flagship of "Lord Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar." [thanks to the wiki in all instances.]

The Victory, a First Rate ship of the line, even for the time, an extraordinary vessel and warship.

"the First Rate comprised those ships mounting 100 guns or more on three gundecks."

1. A First Rate ship, even when completed, at great expense, immediately placed in mothballs for a period of THIRTEEN YEARS!!

"she was placed in ordinary—in reserve, roofed over, dismasted and placed under general maintenance—moored in the River Medway for 13 years"

2. A ship, the construction of which required, just for this one vessel, the felling of an entire forest.

"used around 6000 trees, 90% of which were oak and the remainder elm, pine and fir."

That works out to about a half-mile [1/2] square of solid old growth oak forest, each acre having about fifty trees of considerable stature and girth. From the waterline down, the Victory had planking that was TWO FEET THICK. Not sure if this was solid, laminate, or overlap!

[it would be impossible to construct a ship the size of the Victory today, finding timbers of the requisite size? The wood required in the proper dimensions WOULD JUST NOT BE AVAILABLE?]

3. The firepower of the Victory was impressive - - to say the least!

The weight of shot as fired by a single salvo [is that the correct term?] from the vessel, each and every of the one hundred and four [104] guns carried by the warship firing ONCE, was equal to an army of 30,000 men-a-foot, each and every foot soldier discharging his Brown Bess musket a single time!!! [this precludes those infantrymen having and firing their own organic cannon!]

As I said, statistics and factoids, impressive, almost overwhelming in nature.

coolbert.

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