The hand-tinted postcard on the left shows Vice Admiral Lord Nelson's flagship, HMS Victory, still afloat at Portsmouth at the beginning of the twentieth century. The Victory is a first rate ship of the line, mounting 100 guns. Her exact age in 1900 depends on one's point of view: she was first laid down in 1759, but not launched until May 7, 1765 and only completed in 1778 (a normal turn of events for a warship during intermittent bouts of war and peace), so her age at this juncture ranged from 122 to 141 years. Whatever the number back in 1900, today she is the oldest commissioned ship in existence.

The Victory ended her sea-going life in 1812 and shortly thereafter she was paid off into the ordinary.*  Between 1889 and 1904, she was refitted and served as a Naval School of Telegraphy and a Signal School. In 1922, after more than a century of deterioration and neglect, she was moved to her present drydock location and completely restored to her 1805, Battle of Trafalgar configuration. 

One thing missing from every photograph of Victory is her massive spread of 37canvas sails (6,510 square yards or 5,468 sq. metres). Having ended her active career before the advent of photography, and being permanently in drydock now, she will never again be seen under full sail. Posterity is left to rely on artists' depictions, ranging from the knowledgeable and contemporaneous oil paintings of Nicholas Pocock (1740-1821) to the much later, fanciful renderings in memorabilia such as Wills' cigarette cards (above right).

* laid up in a dockyard or harbor, with masts, rigging, sails and guns removed and stored ashore; the upper deck was temporarily roofed over to slow down deterioration of the timber.