AT PORTSMOUTH POINT
Thomas Rowlandson.
IN PORTSMOUTH HARBOUR
Thomas Rowlandson.
On the day that the Victory’s keel was laid two men were pilloried in Cheapside for blackmailing a City merchant, and a bad egg accidentally hitting the Sheriff’s officer in charge of the proceedings led to a riot and fighting with drawn swords. On the day before the Victory was launched, one Mary Norwood, an unfaithful wife, condemned at Taunton Assizes for poisoning her husband, was publicly strangled in the market-place of Ilverston, her home, and her body tied to the stake and burned before several hundred spectators.
So far back does the life-story of our “old” Victory take us, touching at either end the middle of the eighteenth century and the opening years of the twentieth, directly linking King George the Second with King Edward the Seventh.
HOW THEY BUILT THE VICTORY AT CHATHAM
This is the story of the building of the Victory at Chatham Dockyard, and how, why, and when the order to set to work on this particular first-rate man-of-war was given.