Tall Ship History
HMS Victory, launched at Chatham in 1765, was a 100-gun ship of the line with a length of 227.5 ft overall (69.34 m), a displacement of 3500 tons, and a crew of more than 800 men.
On Oct. 21, 1805, at the Battle of Trafalgar, twenty-seven British ships of the line led by Admiral Lord Nelson aboard HMS Victory defeated thirty-three French and Spanish ships of the line under French Admiral Villeneuve. The battle took place in the Atlantic Ocean off the southwest coast of Spain, just west of Cape Trafalgar. The Franco-Spanish fleet lost twenty-two ships and the British lost none.
In the 1920s, HMS Victory was put in a dry dock and restored to her condition under Nelson. She was unveiled to the public in all her glory by King George V on 17 July 1928 at Portsmouth. She retains her status as a fully commissioned ship in the Royal Navy and serves as the flagship of the Naval Home Command, but to her visitors, she remains a precious museum and testament to Britain’s naval past.
Cutty Sark
She was designed by Hercules Linton and built in 1869 at Dumbarton, Scotland, by the firm of Scott & Linton, for Captain John "Jock" "White Hat" Willis; Scott & Linton was liquidated, and she was launched November 22nd of that year by William Denny & Brothers.
Cutty Sark was destined for the tea trade, then an intensely competitive race across the globe from China to London, with immense profits to the ship to arrive with the first tea of the year. However, she did not distinguish herself; in the most famous race, against Thermopylae in 1872, both ships left Shanghai together on June 18th, but two weeks later Cutty Sark lost her rudder after passing through the Sunda Strait, and arrived in London on October 18th, a week after Thermopylae, a total passage of 122 days. Her legendary reputation is supported by the fact that her captain chose to continue this race with an improvised rudder instead of putting into port for a replacement yet was only beaten by one week.
In the end, clippers lost out to steamships, which could pass through the recently opened Suez Canal and deliver goods more reliably, if not quite so quickly, which proved to be better for business. Cutty Sark was then used on the Australian wool trade. Under the respected Captain Richard Woodgate, she did very well, posting Australia-to-Britain times of as little as 67 days. Her best run, 360 nautical miles (666 km) in 24 hours (an average 15 kn (28 km/h), was said to have been the fastest of any ship of her size.
Mayflower
The Mayflower brought the first group of Pilgrims to North America in 1620. As originally conceived, the expedition included another vessel, the Speedwell, but the latter proved unseaworthy. The Mayflower, about 180 gross tons and carrying 102 passengers, finally got under way from Plymouth, England, on September 16, 1620. The ship was headed for Virginia, where the colonists had been authorized to settle. As a result of stormy weather and navigational errors, the vessel failed to make good its course, and on November 21 the Mayflower rounded the end of Cape Cod and dropped anchor off the site of present-day Provincetown, Massachusetts. No one knows exactly what the ship looked like, but it was probably about 27 m (90 ft) long, had three masts and two decks, and probably weighed about 180 tons.
Sovereign of the Seas
H.M.S. Sovereign of the Seas, launched in 1637, was the most powerfully armed ship in the world in its day. It was originally going to have 90 guns, but King Charles I personally insisted that a "great ship" be built for the English Royal Navy, so it went to sea with 102 bronze guns. The vessel was the most extravagantly decorated warship in the Royal Navy, completely adorned from stern to bow with gilded carvings. The ship was later renamed Sovereign and then Royal Sovereign. It was destroyed by fire in 1697 in Chatham.
Soleil Royal
Soleil Royal (Royal Sun) was a French 104-gun ship of the line, flagship of Admiral Tourville.
She was built in Brest between 1668 and 1670 by engineer Laurent Hubac, was launched in 1669, and stayed unused in Brest harbour for years. She was recommissioned with 112 guns and 1200 men when the Nine Years War broke out in 1688 as the flagship of the escadre du Ponant (squadron of the Ponant).
She was said to be a good sailing ship and her decorations were amongst the most beautiful and elaborate of all baroque flagships. The emblem of the "sun" had been chosen by Louis XIV as his personal symbol.
San Felipe
The San Felipe, launched in 1690, was one of the most beautiful Spanish galleons of the XVII century. She was the lead ship of the famous Spanish Armada. The San Felipe displaced more than 1000 tons and was armed with 96 cannons, enabling her to take on the most formidable ships in the French and British navies. The San Felipe’s role in the war against the British and French was to help protect Spanish settlements and harbors, to transport treasures, and to safeguard the long and hazardous passage back to Spanish ports. In 1705, the San Felipe participated in a furious and heroic battle between 12 Spanish ships and 35 British ships. After 24 hours of battle, she was captured by an English ship but was so badly damaged that she could not be salvaged as a prize. She went down to the bottom of the ocean with several tons of gold.
The HMS Fairfax was launched in September 1653 for the First Anglo-Dutch War. Initially commanded by Captain Edward Blagg, he was replaced within three months by Captain John Lawson. After the restoration of the English monarchy in 1660, the Fairfax was commissioned into the Royal Navy under a new commander. In 1673, after thirteen years of service, she struck a sandbank off the English coast. Though refloated a month later, she was deemed unserviceable and taken to Woolwich Dockyard, where she was broken up in 1674 and her timbers repurposed for other vessels.
Fairfax was a 52-gun third rate Speaker-class frigate of the Commonwealth of England, built by Peter Pett I at Deptford and launched in 1650. In the British Royal Navy, a third rate was a ship of the line which from the 1720s mounted between 64 and 80 guns, typically built with two gun decks (thus the related term two-decker).
Danmark
DANMARK is a steel-hulled, three-masted and full-rigged ship. It was built as a training ship in 1933 at Nakskov Shipyard in Denmark. Since then it has provided basic training for young people seeking careers at sea. The ship is the property of the Kingdom of Denmark and has its home base there. It is capable of sailing all over the world, however in the recent years it has only been sailing in European waters. On special occasions it crosses the Atlantic Ocean to visit the USA, where the ship stayed during WWII and provided training for US cadets. The ship is capable of carrying 26 sails in a total of 1632 square-meters. A main engine of 357 kW ensures that the ship will be able to make its way also when the wind is erratic.
Vasa was built top-heavy and had insufficient ballast. Despite an obvious lack of stability in port, it was allowed to set sail and foundered only a few minutes after it first encountered a wind stronger than a breeze. The impulsive move to set sail was the result of a combination of factors: Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus, who was leading the army on the continent on the date of its maiden voyage, was impatient to see it join the Baltic fleet in the Thirty Years War; at the same time, the kings subordinates lacked the political courage to discuss the ships structural problems frankly or to have the maiden voyage postponed.
During the 1961 recovery, thousands of artifacts and the remains of at least 15 people were found in and around the hull of the Vasa by marine archaeologists. Among the many items found were clothing, weapons, cannons, tools, coins, cutlery, food, drink and six of the ten sails. No expense was spared in decorating and equipping the Vasa, which was also one of the largest and most heavily armed warships of its time.