[theme music] ROB BELL: Majestic, powerful, and deadly.

For over 400 years, British ships ruled the waves.

These magnificent vessels helped shape history across the globe.

I'm Rob Bell, and in this series, I'll be exploring six of the world's greatest ships.

In this episode, I discover the extraordinary story of HMS Victory, the ship that won the Battle of Trafalgar.

Together with her famous commander, Admiral Nelson, Victory confirmed Britain's domination of the oceans for over a century.

[dramatic music] 21st of October 1805.

In the waters off the southern tip of Spain, a battle raged that would come to be seen as Britain's greatest ever naval encounter-- Trafalgar.

♪ ♪ Commanding the fleet was Britain's most famous admiral, Horatio Nelson.

And by early afternoon, he could see the battle might just turn his way.

But then, disaster.

[gunshot] Nelson was struck by a musket ball about the size of a blueberry.

It entered via his left shoulder, cut through a major artery, punctured a lung, and smashed through his spine.

Nelson fell on this spot.

[tense music] As Nelson's life hung in the balance, the great battle that still raged around him, Trafalgar, would become forever linked with his memory.

And central to Nelson's achievement at this legendary battle was the flagship on which he now lay-- HMS Victory.

The story behind this great ship is almost as extraordinary as that of the admiral himself.

[soft music] It began here, over 40 years previously, at the Royal Navy's largest dockyards.

On the 13th of December 1758, a very important letter from the Admiralty was sent to the very nerve center of Chatham Dock, the Commissioner's House.

It instructed the commissioner to prepare to set up and build a new ship of a hundred guns as soon as possible.

That unnamed ship would become HMS Victory.

[dramatic music] Britain's great enemy throughout much of the 18th century was France, and a giant warship like Victory was designed to take the fight to the French like never before.

At the time she's ordered, Victory, which displaces weighs about 3,500 tons, is the largest warship in the world.

She's the largest ship in the world.

Victory is intended to carry 100 guns.

100 or more guns makes you a first-rate line of battleship.

That's what Victory is.

This is a huge investment for the government, equivalent really to constructing an aircraft carrier today.

So it's a very big deal.

[buzzing] ROB BELL: Constructing Victory was a monumental task that required the felling of over 6,000 trees from places like the New Forest in Hampshire.

Back at Chatham, hundreds of skilled workmen then set about converting the timber into the thousands of individual components required to build the ship.

It meant this vast 400-acre plot was one of the busiest industrial complexes on the planet.

And eventually, after six long years of work, Victory was finally completed in 1765.

Victory was launched from the dock here some 5 and 1/2 years after she was commissioned.

It was such an important event, the prime minister and most of his cabinet attended.

And it appears they weren't disappointed.

One newspaper wrote that HMS Victory was the largest and finest ship ever built.

[dramatic music] Over the next 30 years of on-off conflict, Victory became a firm favorite of the fleet.

And as Victory proved her worth, so did her ambitious future captain, Horatio Nelson.

By his late 30s, he was a rising star in the Royal Navy, and already, he was showing signs of the maverick temperament that was to seal his place in history.

Nowhere was this more on show than in 1797, when Nelson was in command of a 74-gun warship, HMS Captain, at the Battle of Cape St.

Vincent, a naval engagement against the Spanish just off the coast of Portugal.

[dramatic music] ♪ ♪ After a strong start, the British fleet had the Spanish on the run.

From this point, Nelson's orders from his superior officer were simple-- pursue the Spanish in an orderly line with the rest of the British fleet.

But the young, ambitious Nelson had other ideas.

When he saw several Spanish ships break away, he decided to swing out of the line of battle and go after them.

He was directly disobeying the orders of a superior and knew that failure could lead to a court martial.

Nelson was effectively gambling his whole career on a single move of death or glory.

♪ ♪ As Nelson tore away from the British line, he engaged the mighty Spanish warship, the San Nicolas.

Ignoring the rulebook again, he personally led the charge on board.

Then, when another Spanish ship, the San Jose, attempted to aid her sister ship, Nelson used the first ship as a bridge to board the second, a feat unprecedented in naval history.

It was bold.

It was reckless, and it was insubordinate.

But it made Nelson a star.

[soft music] ♪ ♪ Back in England, Nelson was knighted and promoted to the rank of admiral.

But for another participant in the battle, the outcome hadn't been quite so glorious.

Leading the fleet in which Nelson had fought had been none other than his future flagship, HMS Victory.

Yet while this was the first time Nelson and Victory had ever served together in the same fleet, it could very well also have been their last.

ANDREW BAINES: After the battle of Cape St.

Vincent, Victory comes back into port, and she's in a pretty sorry state.

So she's in need of some major repairs.

And as far as the government's concerned, for a ship that's nearly four decades old, the amount of money required, it cannot be justified.

You're better off buying a new ship.

[light music] ROB BELL: Eventually, a grim proposal was made.

The towering flagship Victory would be converted into a static prison ship, known as a hulk.

Now, the problem for any ship is that once you are a prison hulk, there is no way back for you.

Because big holes are cut into the ship's side, and you cannot then ever reverse those to make the ship fit for sea in an economical fashion.

So it would have been the end.

It's hard to imagine now, but back then it was looking as though this magnificent ship was about to take a one-way voyage to the breaker's yard.

♪ ♪ Today, HMS Victory is famous for her role as Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar.

But just eight years previously, the aging Victory had been declared unfit for service and officially retired from frontline duties.

Luckily for Victory, however, developments in Europe soon made it clear that this might be a dangerous time for Britain to be reducing its fleet.

Just across the channel, Napoleon was plotting to expand his empire.

Having seized power in 1799, France's new ruler, Napoleon Bonaparte, soon began to carve his way through mainland Europe.

The British knew that if left unchecked, this ambitious dictator could one day threaten to invade England itself.

With no time to build a new first-rate ship, the order was given to bring an old warhorse out from retirement.

HMS Victory was back on the front line.

[dramatic music] Back at Chatham, Victory began her great repair.

It was a vast undertaking that involved the renovation of her stern-- four new gunports and three new masts.

Yet there was one less obvious component in need of renewal that was vital to almost every working part on the ship-- rope.

Remarkably, one essential building from Victory's great repair is still in commercial operation today, more than two centuries later.

This incredibly long 18th-century industrial building is The Ropery, the world's only surviving rope-making factory from the age of sail.

To make rope, fibers must be pulled taut as they're wound together.

It means roperies, or rope walks, must be as long as the longest length of rope they're designed to make.

Perhaps surprisingly, however, it wasn't the rope for the sails that dictated the vast quarter-mile length of Chatham's ropery.

As modern-day rope maker Dave Cheer explains, it was the mechanics of a ship's anchor that determined this building's size.

The Admiralty decided that all the British fleet had to anchor in 40 fathoms of water.

So to do that, by the time you had the anchor, the capstans and stuff, you needed 120 fathoms of rope.

Which is what in-- Roughly just short of a quarter of a mile.

ROB BELL: You've got a load of bikes kicking about.

Is that-- DAVE CHEER: Yeah, it's because we're lazy.

No, because the building's so long.

It speeds up the work process.

Because otherwise, obviously walking back and forth all day, you'd wear yourself out.

[curious music] ♪ ♪ ROB BELL: Although today's ropery is powered by Victorian machines adapted to run on electricity, the basic principles of rope-making used here have remained largely unchanged.

This is a machine from the 1850s.

So how-- how would that compare to the work that was done on Victory during the great repair?

Very similar.

The principle was basically the same.

In fact, the principle hasn't really changed since the Egyptians.

So, yeah.

Basically, yeah, just a simple process of winding it one way, then winding it back the other way to put the strength into the rope.

- OK.

Let's get it fired up.

[dramatic music] ♪ ♪ The first stage in the process involves twisting individual yarns of fiber into stronger strands.

Only then can three of the strands be twisted together to form a single strong rope.

It's kind of hypnotic watching this rope being made.

What fascinates me, Dave, is just how important the rope that's been produced here for two centuries, how important that is on ships like HMS Victory.

You know, the importance of having rope that you could put all of your faith in.

Gonna do what you needed when you need it.

Yeah.

That's the difference between winning and losing.

Oh, yeah, definitely.

Yeah.

[inspiring music] ♪ ♪ ROB BELL: Once replacement rope had been made, new sails could finally be fitted.

And today, there's one place where you can still get a sense of just how spectacular Victory must have looked at this last stage of her great repair.

As she stands today, HMS Victory doesn't have all her sails and rigging.

This model shows just how extensive that was.

It's absolutely mind-boggling.

This was built for a 1941 Hollywood film called That Hamilton Woman.

More about her later.

But it is incredibly accurate.

When it had to be, this was the star of the movie's battle scenes.

These tiny cannons along the side here could actually be he fired.

For me, this allows you to appreciate just how complex a vessel HMS Victory was.

[dramatic music] ♪ ♪ Meanwhile, back on the continent, Victory's future commander, Admiral Nelson, had had an action-packed few years.

In 1797, as he led an assault on the island of Tenerife, he was struck by a musket ball and had to have his arm amputated.

It's said that just half an hour later, he was back giving orders to his men.

Then, in 1798, Nelson had his greatest success yet at the Battle of the Nile.

This famous contemporary cartoon shows the crocodiles of the French fleet being beaten by Nelson with the British oak of the Royal Navy.

Back in England, the Victory made him a superstar.

[heroic music] Before long, however, it wasn't just the admiral's military conquests that had people talking.

This is a real treasure trove of documents and images relating to Nelson.

And the lady in this picture is particularly important.

This is Emma Hamilton, a former actress and model who Nelson met and fell in love with.

Now, unfortunately for Nelson, he was already married.

And so was Mrs.

Hamilton.

But the pair didn't let that stop them.

Rather surprisingly, Mr.

Hamilton didn't seem to object to their relationship either.

And the three of them moved back to England together, buying a large house just outside London, where they lived in a scandalous yet seemingly amicable ménage a trois.

[soft music] Back on the continent, however, a storm was brewing that threatened to break Nelson's unconventional domestic bliss.

[ominous music] After a brief peace, war with Napoleon was resumed in 1803.

And this time, the emperor's sights were locked firmly on Britain.

If Britain was to be knocked out, it had to be invaded.

And Napoleon concentrated a huge army at Boulogne, just on the other side of the channel.

But the problem was, how do you get hundreds of thousands of men over?

[dramatic music] ROB BELL: At one point, Napoleon even considered using giant balloons to transport his troops across the channel.

In the end, however, the only credible path to invasion was by sea.

He built a flotilla of vessels, landing craft, if you like.

But this needed to be covered by the French fleet.

So the key problem was getting command of the channel for long enough for the armée d'angleterre to actually land in England.

ROB BELL: With the threat of invasion imminent, Nelson was dispatched to Portsmouth to take command of a certain newly refurbished flagship, none other than HMS Victory.

Once on board Victory, Nelson set up office here in his day cabin and then set to work on his new mission.

And it was simple-- take command of the British fleet in the Mediterranean and prevent Napoleon's ships from joining an invasion force waiting to cross the channel.

[tense music] A major division of the French fleet was anchored off the coast of southern France.

Nelson surrounded them at the Port of Toulon, blocking their escape.

Mounting a blockade would require a very different approach to the fearless acts of aggression that had won Nelson his fame.

[dramatic music] ♪ ♪ Blockade duty was boring.

If you're containing the French fleet in the Mediterranean, you spend all your time at sea.

Nelson, I think, spent two years at sea.

So you have to be relatively happy.

You have to have a relatively stable situation on board.

It's a stress on the morale of the ship.

Unhappy ships get even unhappier if you're at sea for very long periods.

And so you have to maintain morale.

You have to maintain discipline.

And you don't have the-- the sort of the adrenaline rush of going into battle.

ROB BELL: In the claustrophobic atmosphere of a blockade, keeping order among hundreds of rowdy, frustrated seamen could be a struggle.

But for anyone who stepped out of line, a harsh punishment awaited.

[tense music] The offender would be stripped to the waist and tied to this grating here.

And this was the instrument of punishment.

The infamous cat o' nine tails.

It has nine of these strands of rope, each with knots tied in them, specifically for lacerating the skin on impact.

I mean, just swinging it makes you wince.

Imagine receiving 36 lashes with this against your bare skin from a member of your own crew.

[soft music] ♪ ♪ Punishments on board Victory may have been harsh, but Nelson was also renowned for taking a deep, personal interest in the welfare of his men.

Nelson spends a lot of time working to ensure that his crew are healthy and well-organized.

Part of that is around almost an obsession with diet.

Fresh vegetables, fresh meat.

These guys play with guns that weigh in at 2 1/2, 3 tons each.

They climb masts to handle sails, which are extremely heavy.

You have to be in top health to be able to do it well, and that is why diet is so important.

[tense music] ROB BELL: Nelson blockaded the French in the Port of Toulon for more than 18 months.

But then, in March 1805, the French fleet made a break for it, with Nelson in hot pursuit.

[gripping music] Hoping to lose the British out in the Atlantic, the French planned to then unite back in Europe ahead of an invasion of England.

The French are trying to draw off a sufficient number of British ships that they have a chance of controlling the channel.

ROB BELL: The French evaded the British for several months.

Eventually, however, they were intercepted off the coast of northern Spain.

From here, they managed to escape yet again, this time southward down the Iberian coast.

[tense music] ♪ ♪ Both Nelson and Napoleon knew the game of cat and mouse couldn't go on forever.

The day of reckoning was coming, and a decisive win would ensure control over the world's oceans.

The location for the battle would be just off the south coast of Spain, here at Trafalgar.

[dramatic music] ♪ ♪ On the 29th of September 1805, HMS Victory and the rest of the British fleet sat at anchor just off the Spanish port of Cadiz, where Napoleon's fleet had sought refuge.

It was Admiral Lord Nelson's 47th birthday, and he summoned 15 commanding officers to Victory to celebrate and to outline his battle plans.

[gripping music] The briefing was held in Nelson's personal dining room.

Historian Andrew Baines has studied the events of this legendary meeting.

What were Nelson's tactics that he outlined here?

So the majority of captains around the table haven't served with Nelson before.

He doesn't know them.

They don't know him.

They're going to be very used to the typical way of fighting at sea in the 18th century.

So, for example, these glasses and candlesticks represent the Royal Navy.

The French navy and the Spanish are the plates.

And the typical way of fighting would be to have the ships in a line, the enemy in a line.

And we'd sail in a line heading in that direction on a parallel course, and we'd shoot at one another.

So the English all lined up facing that way-- Facing that way.

- --moving gradually along-- - Sailing along.

--and-- The French doing exactly the same.

In the same direction?

- In the same direction.

- OK.

And you shoot at one another.

So relatively straightforward.

It does not deliver overwhelming victory.

Because this is a very strong defensive position.

It's very hard to break an opponent in this position.

But it's also a quite weak offensive position.

And for the first eight years, this happens about 14 times.

And they're not quite no score draws, but not far off.

You do not get an overwhelming victory.

[dramatic music] ROB BELL: Nelson's approach at Trafalgar marked a radical departure from this conventional strategy.

Instead of simply lining up against the Franco-Spanish fleet and launching broadsides, Nelson planned to arrange his fleet in two dagger-like formations to punch through the enemy line.

ANDREW BAINES: So we no longer have this carefully choreographed arrangement of nice, neat lines.

What we have is what Nelson describes as the pell-mell battle, which might best be regarded as a barroom brawl.

And in a barroom brawl, it boils down to how hard you can hit.

And he is going to smash through their line.

Nelson wants an overwhelming victory.

[suspenseful music] ROB BELL: On the morning of the 21st of October 1805, it was finally time to put this plan to the test.

From the deck of his flagship, Victory, Nelson gave the order to attack.

This is Nelson's very own signal book.

Effectively, it's a code book that Nelson used to send out different commands and signals to his fleet.

And on the 21st of October, this book would have been used to send one of the most famous calls to arms in military history.

It read, "England expects that every man will do his duty."

[dramatic music] ♪ ♪ On Nelson's signal, his fleet advanced towards the Franco-Spanish line.

Victory made a beeline for the French flagship, La Bucentaure, the heart of the battle.

The outcome now lay in the hands of those operating Victory's fearsome cannons.

I've come to meet historian Paul Pattison to find out why British gunners on ships like Victory were quite so feared.

Why was Nelson so confident in the British superiority of their firepower?

Because he knew that his crews were far better trained and far more efficient than the French and the Spanish.

They'd spent longer at sea practicing, both just drill and with live ammunition, and they could deliver two, three, four times more shot in the same period.

- Really?

As big a difference is that?

- Yeah.

That's a massive advantage.

It's a huge advantage.

It was guns like this that was doing that damage, was it, and blasting them initially?

Yeah, this is an 18-pounder gun, typical of guns that were used at Trafalgar.

Fires a shot weighing 18 pounds.

18 pounds of iron.

ROB BELL: That's these here, is it?

PAUL PATTISON: Yeah.

ROB BELL: [groans] OK, yeah.

Yeah.

So that-- That's an 18-pound shot.

That's the thing that's coming out of that end, the end of the process.

And it would just smash its way through the wood, sending lethal showers of wood everywhere.

[dramatic music] ROB BELL: Operating this mighty weapon in the heat of battle was no easy task.

First, a tool called a worm was used to scrape out debris from the previous shot.

♪ ♪ A sponge was then dipped in water to cool the barrel.

A packet of gunpowder was pushed to the back of the chamber, before shot was loaded and the explosive ignited.

[cannon fires] The weight of shot that could be discharged from all 104 of Victory's cannons was so large that it outstripped the entire firepower of Wellington's field guns at the Battle of Waterloo.

Just imagine the noise in here on the upper gun deck as all of this artillery, plus that from the two gun decks below, were being discharged.

Add to that the thousands upon thousands of other guns going off elsewhere in the battle.

It's little wonder the Battle of Trafalgar could be heard some 72 miles away on mainland Spain.

[dramatic music] As the battle began, Victory herself came under brutal volleys of cannon fire.

Stored at a warehouse at the Victory museum, this section of the ship's original mast shows the damage inflicted by a searingly hot cannonball as it punched through the wood like a knife through butter.

[cannon fires] [ominous music] Yet, while conventional round shot might have been well suited to ripping through a ship's mast, destroying other parts of an enemy vessel required a more bizarre form of ammunition.

Round shot wasn't the only projectile available at Trafalgar.

Expanding shot was specifically for anti-rigging.

And you can see as I extend the bars, you can see the serrated edges on each, which, when on impact in the rigging, would literally rip it to pieces and immobilize the enemy, their ability to maneuver in the sea.

And, of course, the addition to that is it could conceivably fall on any of the troops of the enemy on open deck below.

[tense music] ROB BELL: Even those who avoided a direct hit were far from safe.

Where cannon shot tore into the ship's wooden structure, the impact on those even several feet away could be deadly.

These splinters are extremely needle-like, and the weight of this flying through the air hitting anybody would be enough to seriously debilitate them.

[cannon fires] [dramatic music] ROB BELL: Despite the onslaught from enemy artillery, by early afternoon, Nelson's plan seemed to be working.

The British headed directly towards the Franco-Spanish fleet, smashing through their line and subjecting them to a punishing barrage of cannon fire.

It was during this brutal assault, however, that Victory ran into trouble.

Sailing close to an enemy ship, the Redoutable, she became entangled in her rigging.

The two ships were locked so closely together that Victory's crew threw buckets of water on the French ship to prevent her catching alight and taking Victory with her.

All around, men were suffering the most hideous and sometimes bizarre deaths, none more so than the captain's clerk, Thomas Whipple, who dropped down dead without a mark on his body.

It's said that a shot passed so close by his head, it created a vortex and sucked the air out of his lungs, suffocating him where he stood.

[dramatic music] In this close quarters style of combat, the superior rate of British cannon fire was still an advantage.

Yet with ships locked together, the French could now also make use of one major defensive weapon-- the Charleville musket.

As you can see, it's quite a formidable thing.

Indeed.

It's got a flintlock mechanism.

OK, so this is the mechanism here.

PAUL PATTISON: This is the lock mechanism.

Yeah, it's got a flint, right, which, when you pull the trigger, strikes this thing called the frisson, pushes it forward, creating sparks which drop into the pan, which fire the charge in the barrel.

So that's flint on the metal.

Yep.

Spark comes up and then, bang, away you go.

Exactly.

So what were the French tactics with-- with their muskets on board?

You might have had small groups of men equipped with these who were volley-firing into groups of soldiers on the deck, and you might have had one or two up in the rigging that were looking down on the opposite deck, picking out targets.

If you think about it, 30 meters away, you've got a fair chance of an accurate shot, even on a rolling ship.

So you would have had a number of sharpshooters in key positions looking for targets on the deck.

Looking for key targets, possibly.

Yes, absolutely.

Yeah.

[tense music] It wasn't long before one French marksman found just such a target.

At 1:15 at the Battle of Trafalgar, a French sharpshooter high up in the mizzentop of Redoutable spied Lord Nelson pacing the quarterdeck.

He raised his Charleville musket, took aim, and pulled the trigger.

[gunshot] And you can just imagine his reaction as this ordinary French musketeer saw the great Lord Nelson, famed throughout Europe, drop to the deck.

Panic erupted.

If word got out that the admiral had been shot, the effect on the British fleet could have been fatal.

ANDREW BAINES: The biggest concern for Nelson is around morale.

So Nelson instructed his face and his medals are covered with a handkerchief in case news should make its way through Victory that something's happened to him.

ROB BELL: A still conscious Nelson was rushed down to the ship's lowest and safest deck, the orlop.

It was here in the depths of the orlop where Victory's surgeon worked in a terrifying, battle-operating theater, deciding in an instant who was past help and who might be saved, using his own trusty instruments.

This is a 19th-century naval surgeon's toolkit.

Operations during battle would have been brutal.

Amputations were commonplace.

And with only a weak anesthetic like laudanum, a pad of leather to bite down on, and a trusty saw here, a good ship's surgeon could perform an entire amputation in under 90 seconds.

But you can only imagine what that would have looked like.

It would've been carnage down here.

[cannon fires] [dramatic music] Yet, as Nelson lay fighting for his life, his marines on the quarterdeck above faced a renewed and bloody assault from the French.

In the fight that followed, more than a dozen were slaughtered before another British ship, the Temeraire, mowed down the invaders with a torrent of this, canister shot, effectively a giant shotgun cartridge, which was devastating against the human body at close range.

All around, the carnage was horrific.

And by the end of the battle, every sailor who'd served on these decks was either killed or injured.

[dramatic piano music] Back below deck, the ship's surgeon was beginning to realize the seriousness of Nelson's injury.

The musket ball that had hit his left shoulder had also hit his lower spine, causing inoperable damage.

Without their admiral, the only chance of victory for the British now lay in the strength of the dying Nelson's plan.

When Nelson was brought before Victory's surgeon down here on the orlop deck, the Battle of Trafalgar was a little over an hour old.

And as the British fleet's brilliant, charismatic commander lay here, slowly dying, the outcome of the battle hung in the balance.

[cannon fires] [dramatic music] At the moment of his finest hour at Trafalgar, Admiral Nelson lay in the depths of his flagship, Victory, fighting for his life.

[cannon fires] Slowly, however, the British began to assert their superiority.

[cannon fires] And by 4:30 in the afternoon, thanks to Nelson's plan, victory was theirs.

[soft music] For the Franco-Spanish fleet, it was an especially bloody defeat.

While the British lost over 450 sailors, the combined fleet lost around seven times as many-- over 3,000 men.

Nelson lived just long enough to learn that he had won the Battle of Trafalgar.

His final words are the subject of a huge debate.

But three witnesses to his death reported that he did indeed ask his captain, Hardy, to kiss him.

Hardy kissed him once on the cheek and once on the forehead, and Nelson replied, "God bless you, Hardy."

Nelson's body was shipped back to England in a cask filled with brandy to preserve the corpse.

♪ ♪ The reaction back home was unprecedented.

This book was produced shortly after Trafalgar, commemorating Nelson's death and his great victory.

And it captures a curious blend of both joy and a mass outpouring of grief, not dissimilar to the reaction after the death of Diana, the Princess of Wales.

[ethereal music] Nelson's body was first taken to Greenwich Naval Hospital before being carried along the river to Whitehall.

And this image captures that moment with this huge flotilla sailing down the Thames and rows of people lining the banks of the Thames.

And then a great procession, including sailors from Victory, followed Nelson's funeral carriage all the way to St.

Paul's.

And at St.

Paul's itself, a state funeral.

Nelson was only the second commoner ever to have a state funeral, after Sir Isaac Newton.

And this image shows just how packed that funeral was.

[somber music] ♪ ♪ Nelson was given permanent memorials up and down the country.

Most famously, Nelson's column in London was placed in a square named after his greatest victory, Trafalgar.

Despite all this celebration, however, Nelson's victory didn't end the wars with France.

It wasn't until the Battle of Waterloo, 10 years later, that Napoleon would finally be defeated.

So why did Nelson and Trafalgar become such a vital part of Britain's national story?

Strategically, Trafalgar is important.

Indeed, it helped maintain British command of the sea.

So Napoleon will have to build a huge new fleet if he's going to threaten invasion again.

But its symbolic, its sacramental importance is even more-- more so.

It symbolizes the quality of the Royal Navy.

It symbolizes the fact that the Royal Navy is the dominant force at sea and will remain so for another hundred years or more.

[dramatic music] ♪ ♪ ROB BELL: Today, Trafalgar remains central to the mythology of the Royal Navy.

And perhaps the most obvious sign of its continued importance is that, remarkably, Victory is still a fully commissioned warship.

It's part of the fleet.

I mean, this is the flagship of the Royal Navy.

It's the most senior ship in the Navy.

Because we fly the First Sea Lord, Sir Philip Jones's flag on the main mast.

I think the Navy would always want Victory to be the flagship of the Royal Navy.

So that's why we have a ship's company still on board her today.

Dismissed.

ROB BELL: The ship's company of 17 men facilitates Victory's vital ceremonial role, ranging from the education of new naval recruits to the entertainment of ambassadors and royalty.

STEVE BACON IV: I think it's a privilege.

I've been on for four years now.

You are walking in the same places where history was made, and it is really cool and unique to be able to do that.

[dramatic music] There are plenty of buildings as old as HMS Victory, but ships, especially warships this ancient, are another matter.

The continued existence of a ship from 1765 is little short of a miracle and makes Victory utterly unique.

♪ ♪ From her first days as a flagship to her brush with the breaker's yard and her triumph under Nelson at Trafalgar, Victory remains the most celebrated ship that the Royal Navy has ever known.

And by helping to assert Britain's naval superiority, she played a role in shaping her country's fortunes for over a century to come.

She is an astonishing survivor who helped change the world.

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