Our October meeting began with Tony Noon who has worked for the NMRN for just over nine years, with the last two years specifically on the Restoration of HMS Victory Project. His publications include The Essential Visual HMS Victory, Navy Bites, The World of Jack Nastyface, and Exploring Portsmouth Dockyard.
Since HMS Victory was floated out 260 years ago, she has coped with battle damage, neglect, ramming, bombing and the battering of the elements. Conservation and restoration have been a constant challenge since the Society for Nautical Research launched the Save the Victory Fund in 1922. Ownership passed to the Victory Preservation Company in March 2012 since when MoD and a private donor have contributed £25M each to a ten-year restoration project. The first step was to replace the previous steel supports with 134 hydraulic rams, instrumented with such sensitivity that they can detect a school party walking around the ship. More importantly they mimic the support she would receive afloat and prevent further sagging and hogging.
An eye-opening presentation highlighted the amount of the ship’s structure on her starboard (weather) side that will have to be replaced, though her port side is in much better condition. Despite the ship’s less than appealing shrouding the current ‘Big Repair’ project allows visitors, for the first time, to see her internal structure.
The project is on schedule for completion in 2033.
Roger Smith followed up with a talk on HMCS Haida, a Tribal class destroyer which served with the Royal Canadian Navy from 1943 to 1963. Designed in response to large, heavily armed destroyers being built elsewhere the Tribal class were state of the art in 1939. Haida was laid down by Vickers-Armstrong in September 1941 and named for a west coast Indian tribe. Her Second World War battle honours include Arctic convoy escort and operations against destroyers, U-boats and convoys in the Channel. In the Korean War she helped build the Royal Canadian Navy’s reputation for accurate shelling of coastal railways. Now preserved at Hamilton, Ontario, she is the last survivor of twenty-seven Tribals. Haida sank more enemy surface tonnage than any other Canadian warship and is described as the “Fightingest Ship in the Royal Canadian Navy.”
Please see our Events page for details of forthcoming attractions.