Britain’s Bargain Weapons!

Before all my friends in the US run straight to Washington and bang on poor President Obama’s front door venting their spleen on the lack of financial acumen of the government, you may like to know that these weapons were last fired during the reign of King George II, prior to 1744.

The weapons were unearthed (or unsea-ed?) by Florida based treasure-hunting company, Odyssey.  who were looking for ship wrecks off the Channel Islands (southern UK) and discovered two huge brass cannons close to the beautiful island of Alderney.  The company were aware that HMS Victory had supposedly been lost in a storm in 1744 but couldn’t believe their luck when they came across their find – I’ll just mention here that The Victory which sank in 1744 was in fact the predecessor to Nelson’s Victory which came along some 50 years later.

The Victory had been one of the most advanced warships of the era and was the last Navy warship to be fitted out with a full complement of 110 bronze guns.  It was also the most powerful in the world at that time.  The two cannons (not those pictured above I hasten to add, but very similar in design) weighed in at 12 lbs and 42 lbs (the largest cannon to be made by the Royal Navy).  One of the cannon’s interestingly bears the crest of King George I.  These cannons are the first example of their kind to be exhibited in the UK and so it was considered that the money was well spent by the Ministry.

This find could have netted Odyssey a grand sum of £99,000 if it had been sold elsewhere but the company agreed to sell it to the Ministry of Defence for £53,000 in order to help the Royal Naval Museum exhibition on Nelson’s HMS Victory which is now at Portsmouth, where the cannons will be displayed. 

According to naval history, The Victory, which had taken 11 years in the making, had been designed by committees of high ranking naval offices.  It was a huge ship – the rudder alone was said to be 35 ft and it would have taken 6,000 trees (90% of which were oak) to complete!  However, the ship, from it’s inception seemed to have been doomed.  At the time it was being built there was a lack of wood as Britain had been involved in some major wars over the preceding years so mega ship building projects had taken place – and these ships had been built out of oak which is an incredibly slow growing wood.  Add to this the fact that in 1730 there was an extremely dry and warm summer which caused sap in the oak to rise which meant that, rather than the felled wood seasoning, it rotted.  This factor may well have contributed to The Victory ending up in the grasp of Davy Jones!

Eventually the ship was launched but it’s size and design made it top heavy so it probably wasn’t quite up to EU health and safety standards!  The last time it was seen afloat was on 3 October 1744 by the Commander of The Duke – one of 33 ships in the fleet of Admiral Sir John Balchin - to the south-east of the Scilly Isles.  A storm was brewing and it was evident The Victory was struggling to remain steady.  Eventually the wind became so strong that it shredded the sails of The Duke and the ship took on about 10 ft of water but thankfully all the ships in the fleet managed to ‘weather the storm’ except for The Victory which sank with the loss of 1,150 sailors.