Preparations for the work on the HMS Victory foremast took place last week at the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, where experts began a delicate operation to lift the 15-tonne wrought iron mast from Nelson's Battle of Trafalgar flagship. The latest stage of a £42m restoration project involved a 30-strong team of shipwrights and riggers, who worked overnight from Monday into Tuesday to carefully remove the foremast using a 750-tonne crane.
Slow and Careful Process
The team executed the lift with extreme precision to avoid damaging the historic timber structure of the 250-year-old warship. Stuart Sheldon, lead rigger, and Angela Middleton, head of conservation, oversaw the preparations. Patrizia Pierazzo, deputy project director, hailed the operation as a 'great start', noting that despite initial challenges, the foremast was safely removed.
Complex Operation
Andrew Baines, executive director of museum operations at the National Museum of the Royal Navy, admitted to feeling anxious about the lift. 'These masts have not always been maintained as well as they might have been. We're lifting historic wrought iron structures out of a very important timber historic structure. So it's fairly complex,' he said. The masts were designed to carry large spreads of canvas, but Baines likened the lift to someone being yanked up by the hair and swung from vertical to horizontal, a position they haven't held in 130 years.
Planning and Teamwork
About 30 people worked on the operation overnight, with double that number, including archaeologists, structural engineers, and conservators, involved overall. Six months of planning went into refining the process to reduce risks to the ship's fabric and eliminate risks to life. The ship's main mast was removed in 2021 at the start of the Big Repair project. Once all masts are down, a huge scaffolding structure will encase the vessel until the conservation project ends in 2033.
Historical Significance
Victory's original masts were wooden, but in the 1890s, they were replaced with wrought iron masts recycled from the decommissioned frigate HMS Shah. These are thought to be the only surviving iron masts of the 19th century still in use. Baines noted that it is the first time Victory has been without all her masts since then, and the ship will look a little odd. 'The number one query that comes our way is when are the masts going back,' he said. The restoration is a slow, careful process, as the masts are important objects in their own right and need to be protected for another century. HMS Victory and the wider Portsmouth Historic Dockyard site will remain open to visitors throughout the works.
