All day long duty-boats keep going up and down. Now it is an admiral’s twelve-oared barge with the flag at the bows; now a captain’s gig, or a pinnace, pulling between ship and shore; now a midshipman’s boat scurrying off to answer the flagship’s signal. Ships’ long-boats with water-casks and pursers’ stores for various men-of-war in harbour, pass and repass, and beer hoys and yard craft of all kinds. You can always tell a dockyard boat by the heavy way in which the “maties” row, giving their elbows a curious lift with each stroke. At intervals, also, ships’ launches and wherries go past, and lighters carrying cables or anchors, spars and sailcloth, or gangs of shipwrights from the yard on their way to Spithead to attend to pressing repairs to some Channel Fleet ship or frigate just come in and impatient to be off again.

PORTSMOUTH IN THE YEAR THAT THE VICTORY JOINED THE FLEET

1. North Dock. 2. Boat-Houses. 3. Officers’ Houses. 4. Dock Clock. 5. Commissioner’s House. 6. Sail and Mould Loft. 7. Rope House. 8. Royal Academy. 9. Landing Place at the Dock. 10. Rigging House. 11. The Common. 12. Officers’ Lodging in the Gun-Wharf. 13. Lamport Gate. 14. Portsmouth Church. 15. The Point. 16. Flag on the Platform. 17. Round Tower. 18. Spit-Head.

From a Contemporary Print.

Now and again, two or three times a month perhaps, a line of ships’ launches from newly arrived vessels from Spithead are to be seen following one another up the harbour, crammed with men—swarthy foreigners, poor, ragged, dejected-looking wretches for the most part. Each boat has its guard of red-coated marines, standing under arms at the head and stern, all with bayonets fixed. The boatloads comprise prisoners of war, taken at sea and on their way to undergo confinement in Porchester Castle,[9] going to join their two thousand compatriots already there. A favoured few in due course may obtain exchange by cartel, but the greater number must perforce endure their captivity to the end of the war.

Such were some of the every-day scenes to be witnessed in Portsmouth Harbour at the very time that the Admiralty order for the building of the Victory was being drafted.