Wooden miniature of Admiral Nelson's ship

Last year, to mark the 250th anniversary of the building of HMS Victory - Admiral Nelson's famous ship - a tribute exhibition was held. The event took place in the old Chatham shipyard in Kent, where the ship was built. Several replicas of the ship were on display. One of them has a very interesting story. It is a miniature made from a piece of wood from the famous ship.

A 17-year adventure

Twenty-five years before the Kent event, the ship on which Admiral Nelson met his end was restored. It was at this time that the English sculptor Ian Brennan took possession of pieces of oak wood from a beam on the ship. He immediately got the idea to start work on a miniature of the famous ship.

Brennan never imagined that this adventure would last 17 years. The very old and hard wood made it very difficult to work, giving the artist the feeling that he was carving in concrete. He estimated the actual working time on the ship at over 5,000 hours.

The ship was depicted heading towards the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, when it defeated the French and Spanish fleets. Incidentally, this was also to be the last journey of Admiral Nelson, who was shot during the battle and died in his cabin below decks, not before learning that he had won the battle.

The small ship, carved in the wood of her famous predecessor, was built on a scale of 1:66, is 120 cm long and contains 104 miniature cannons, over 600 m of intricate ropes, 37 sails inflated by the wind. It even has the flag with the famous exhortation: England expects every man to do his duty.

While working on the miniature, Brennan was called in for restoration work at the shipyard. For a year he almost lived on the Victory, during which time he discovered that one of his ancestors had served on the ship and died during the Battle of Trafalgar.

The miniature was completed in 2010, and in 2015 was on display for several months at the Chatham shipyard. After the end of the exhibition the little ship returned to its rightful place in the artist's studio.

Here are some facts about the original. HMS Victory, the pride of the British fleet, was built from the wood of over 6,000 trees. In 1831, because of the aftermath of the battles, it was proposed to destroy her, but Sir Thomas Hardy, the ship's captain at Trafalgar, refused to sign the order. In 1920 she nearly sank at Portsmouth, in the dock where she was moored. After a national appeal she was moved to Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, where she remains today. She is now seen by over 400,000 visitors a year.