This isn't good, it's exceptional, fantastic. How did you manage to stay on the boat for 4 hours without being thrown off, I thought they only did guided tours?
Anyway,it's excellent I couldn't have done anything like it.

A note to anyone who is visiting the Victory - I managed to get shots for most decks, except the hold and orlop decks. These were very dark, and I was unable to get very good images here.

So there's a challenge! You may need an external light source to help focus, or failing that a camera with excellent low-light capabilities.

I still cant find away of saving these brilliant pictures in a bigger size, I'm hovering all over the picture???

Ee, sorry, didn't realise that. Flickr is part of Yahoo!, so if you have an account there you should be able to access it fine. I'll have a look at alternatives - the main reasons I uploaded them to Flickr were because I thought everyone would have access to the full resolution images plus I could do it automatically from iPhoto.

Lonestar, the rivet pattern that I posted was for the Syren and not for the Victory, it was meant only as an idea of achieving the rivet pattern, but as I mentioned before would the scale of our ship be such that any rivet pattern would have to be very small and therefore almost impossible to see or even reproduce.

The photographs are of one of the magazines on board Victory. The magazines on wooden ships were lined with sheets of copper for two reasons: The gunpowder had to be kept free of damp so that it would stay explosive over long periods when the ship was at sea. The other and most important reason for using copper was to eliminate the danger of sparks in the magazine. The gunner had the job, during an action, of filling cartridge bags with the black powder before it was sent up to the guns. He would have made sure he wasn't carrying any ferrous metal implements and would wear felt slippers rather than boots with iron nails in them.

There is no reason to believe that the rivet pattern in the magazine would be the same as the external copper. The information I have researched is that the external plates were originally fixed around the edges. Victory was one of the first ships to be coppered and would have had the edge pattern at the time of Trafalgar. It was after Trafalgar that the Royal Navy changed their pattern after a number of incidents in which the copper plate lifted and allowed the rot to get behind.

I want to try some ideas and then suggest a way in which those who want to, can add the 3000+ plates to their hull!

Mike T

The thwarts and windlass were sort of a charcoal grey on the launch at Portsmouth.

Not just flash but cameras generally because of our old friend H&S. Presumably
someone had an accident whilst taking a picture so of course no one can now. Last
time I was there I just hung back from the group which was moving round too fast in
any case, and took all the pics I wanted. If you are the sort of person who obeys
rules though you will be in for a disappoint if you wanted pictures.

John

I'm afraid not, that's all they told me when I started taking pictures, it was clear
that it would be pointless attempting to reason with them. I don't know if there had
been an accident or whether they were being overcautious.

I believe it was the Commander's decision and he had made it fairly recently.

John

Timm

Read my earlier post on this topic. The picture is of one of the magazines where the gun powder is stored. The leather is part of the precautions to ensure there is not even a remote chance of a spark. The walls are copper lined and the barrels are banded with copper hoops, all of which helps to avoid sparking and the possibility of an explosion

Mike T