Dummer House <1>
My dear Papa
I went to last Portsmouth last Wednesday with some other boys and liked it very much. We went on board the Victory <2> I don’t know if you have ever been over her. She is a very odd old ship and sta stands very high out of the water because she has got so few heavy things on bora board. We came down by train to Gosport which I suppose you know [illegible deletion] is one side of the harbour and there we took a boat and crossed the harbour to the Victory which is on the Portsmouth side we ran along one of her sides where there was a regular staircase made from the sea to one of the second deck portholes for the use of the pas visitors and as the Victory cannot go to sea again it I suppose has been put up to make the side easy for people to get up. the side. There are no guns on the upper deck and the portholes are boarded up. We saw the only gun now remaining which had been in the Battle of Trafalgar and there was a great mark where a ball had hit it. There is a little brass plate on the main upper deck on the spot where Nelson fell. we went over the cockpit admirals cabin and a little room where Nelson died leaning against a beam. There was a gunner teaching some boys to point the guns. As soon as we left the Victory we went out of the harbour in a sailing boat and sailed out to Spithead where we saw the ‘Duke of Wellington’ <3> and ‘Endinborough’ both large steamships ready for sea. We went to the dockyard and saw a great many Wonderful thing There were enormous masts and revolving saws worked by steamiengines which cut into two in two a block of wood in a second – and wheels which cut out pulleys made slits in them and wheels for them and then there were great machines which made holes in great sheets of iron and another that sawed five planks at once – And there were a quantity of convicts and soldiers and a small steamer building for the queen and the ‘Victoria and Albert’ <4> which was in harbour It is a very pretty little steamer
I remain your Son
Charles Talbot
Notes:
1. Dummer House, Basingstoke.
2. A 100-gun First Rate ship designed by Sir Thomas Slade, the Surveyor of the Navy (1755–1771), commanded by Admiral Nelson in the Battle of Trafalgar, October 1805.
3. Possibly the steam ship by this name built in 1842 in Dumbarton, Scotland by Russell & Co of Glasgow, Scotland.
4. Three ships carried this name, this reference is probably to the first steam-powered royal yacht, built in 1843.