One Big Ship

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Photographing HMS Victory is not easy. Stand back far enough to see the whole vessel and you tend to get smaller buildings in the shot as well! This was my first glimpse of the historic Georgian warship as I walked through the public access museum area of Portsmouth Naval Dockyard, in the 'Gunwharf Quays' district, on a very grey day in December 2006. The sheer size of the ship is stunning, she towers into the sky and is well over 200 feet long, a triumph of timber engineering. Exposure times were long on this day as the chip dealt with low light levels and intermittent rain, and composition was always going to be a compromise between seeing the ship unobstructed but only in close-up, or longshots that were visually cluttered. Sharpness and colour were enhanced. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

Last of the "Wooden Walls"

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Now here is living history: the last surviving warship of Georgian times, HMS Victory, which though she has been preserved in drydock as a British national treasure also remains a commissioned vessel in the Royal Navy. The Captain and Executive Officer have reserved parking places next to the ship... This ship, Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, typifies the 'wooden walls of England' that protected the country from invasion in the warlike 17th and 18th centuries, and is the technological ancestor of 1869's HMS Warrior, which lies a few hundred yards away at the Historic Portsmouth Naval Dockyard. I visited on a grey day in December, 2006, a day when rain was sweeping through in light, cold showers and the overcast made exposures difficult. Note that the sky is burned out to white to properly expose the ship. She was simply too big to frame the whole ship properly amongst the jumble of buildings surrounding the drydock, but I captured many excellent detail closeups. Sharpened, contrast- and colour-enhanced for publication. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.