A retired sailor is finally completing his painstaking model of HMS Victory – 51 years after he started it.
Michael Byard first began work on the five feet long replica of Nelson’s flagship in 1969.
But after two years he was forced to put the ‘labour of love’ aside as he concentrated on his career and raising a family.
Retired sailor Michael Byard, 80, has almost completed work on his 1:48 replica of HMS Victory which he started in 1969
Mr Byard started his mammoth project with the stem section, pictured here in 1969, though within two years he was forced to put the project on hold for more than 40 years
Here is a section of the bow which Mr Byard fashioned by hand, pictured around 1969, which he used to build his boat
Mr Byard, pictured here around 1960, on the real vessel in Portsmouth, Hampshire, decided to make his model 4ft11 inches long, 14 inches wide and 16 inches tall
Each part of the replica had to be hand carved and glued together in a painstaking process which he was only able to complete over the summer months because of arthritis in his hands
After it languished in his garage for almost four decades the pensioner finally decided to pick up his tools once again six years ago when he was 74.
But because of the arthritis in his thumbs he was then only able to work on it during summer months.
Now Mr Byard is finally on the verge of completing the replica – which consists of over 3,000 pieces, the vast majority of which he cut himself.
HMS Victory, launched in 1765, achieved lasting fame as the flagship of Vice-Admiral Nelson in Britain’s greatest naval victory in the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.
Mr Byard’s model, which features gun ports, life boats and cannons, is 4ft 11inches long, 14 inches wide and 16 inches tall.
Wearing his reading glasses – sometimes even a visor with magnified glasses – he would use tweezers to fit together the most intricate parts.
The model is made with over 300 tiny wooden planks – all hand carved to size – which make up the floor and body of the ship.
The father of two – who estimates he has spent 600 hours working on the model – cut each plank to measure a quarter of an inch to an eighth of an inch before gluing them together with special wood glue.
But arthritis in his thumbs has made it difficult to work constantly on the model, with Michael deciding to stick to building the ship in the summer months for up to five hours a day.
The former naval reserve and shipping company worker, who lives with his wife Anne, 65, in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, said: ‘I’ve had to stop working sometimes because the arthritis gets too bad. Other times, it seemed to ease the pain with use.
‘Over winter I wouldn’t touch the model at all, it was under a cloth in the garage in my workshop and I’d leave it until the next year. It was too cold because the garage isn’t heated. Cold weather doesn’t help with the arthritis very much.’
The HMS Victory model includes 104 brass cannons on the upper deck, which Mr Byard bought from a specialist model maker in Devon.
When he resumed the project in 2014, the lower part of hull had been completed as well as some of the interior frames
In the late 1950s, Mr Byard, pictured in his Royal Navy uniform, was living in Australia but returned to Britain in the early with his wife, Anne
In August 2014, Mr Byard was working on the ship’s upper deck, in an effort to complete the massive project
A year later, in September 2015, Mr Byard was in a position to fit cannons inside the day cabin of his model
It was necessary to improvise while completing his project, using these plastic clothes pegs to hold together the stern section while the glue used during construction to go off in September 2015
This view of the quarter deck from October 2015 shows the intricate work that went into the individual planks used for the deck
For each cannon, he hand-made carriages out of wooden planks to hold them – even cutting small steps either side and making the wheels out of doweling-, with each one taking about half an hour to make.
‘It was very fiddly,’ he said. ‘I was learning as I was going along. There were thousands of pieces, I’ve never kept a record of how many. There were more planks than anything else.
‘There were times when it was frustrating but I enjoyed what I was doing and I had an end goal in sight – it was just a question of working on it.’
Mr Byard made intricate ladders by hand out of one millimetre plywood – and would spend hours cutting and fixing the wood.
‘HMS Victory has so much history and really she’s the only surviving ship of the Napoleonic era in the Royal Navy so she’s very special,’ he said.
He began building the model in 1969 when he was working at a shipping company in Melbourne, Australia, where he had emigrated as a child.
But he packed it away 18 months later before moving back to England with his wife. He had been able to complete the hull up to the Gun Deck level.
Mr Byard, who joined the Royal Australian Naval Reserve as an Ordinary Seaman in 1958, based his model on a book called ‘HMS Victory, Building Restoration and Repair’ which included detailed drawings of the 1797 refurbishment of the Victory in 1:48 scale plans.
He built his ship using the plans at the same size and scale, and began to build it from scratch by cutting out the frames.
Mr Byard was forced to buy the cannons from a model shop, but he made the carriages holding them himself
In August 2017, he was building the port side cranes which would have been used to load supplies and weapons on the ship
Also in August 2017, Mr Byard continued work on the stern timbers and poop deck, pictured
By May 2018, he had completed three anchors, which are built to scale along with the rest of his replica ship
Now Mr Byard’s replica, pictured in July 2020 is almost completed, with cannon along the gun deck
Speaking about his 51 year journey of building the model, he said: ‘It’s been a labour of love. I hung it up in my garage for over 45 years what with working in London and children coming along.
‘And when I was 74 I decided that I better do something about trying to fix it. So for the last six years that’s what I’ve been working on. I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.’
His daughter Anni, an archeologist, gave her father a small toy cannon from the 18th century to put on his ship.
She said: ‘It’s from around 1750 to 1850 so it’s bang on the era that he’s reconstructed the Victory for. It’s a really lovely thing to give Dad something of that period to put on his model. It’s a nice touch really.’
The 41-year-old, from Oxford, said she remembered the hull of the ship being left in their family garage for years.
‘One of my longest memories is that the hull of the ship just hung in the garage for years and as kids we would play in the garage and it was always there,’ she said.
‘And then to see him finally get it down and start working it and to see him putting it together is heartwarming.
‘He would sit there concentrating intensely with his magnifying glass and tweezers in his hand to try and put tiny pins into things,’ she added. ‘When he got the anchors up, he was like a little boy just smiling, grinning from ear to ear.
‘Every time I’d go and see him, he’d say ‘Come and look at my model’. His dedication and patience is incredible and the joy he’s got out of it, I’m so proud of him. It’s been lovely to see it evolve.’
HMS Victory: Lord Nelson’s flagship during Britain’s victory over the French at the Battle Of Trafalgar
HMS Victory first floated out from the Old Single Dock in Chatham’s Royal Dockyard on May 7 1765.
During 206 years in service she would gain recognition for leading fleets in the American War of Independence, the French Revolutionary War and the Napoleonic War.
HMS Victory in its dry dock in Portsmouth, where it is viewed by thousands of visitors each year
HMS Victory is renowned for being the flagship of Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson, Britain’s most celebrated naval leader, fighting in the defeat of the French and the Spanish at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.
However, her service was not to end here – in 1808 she was recommissioned to lead the fleet in the Baltic, but four years later she was relegated to harbour service – serving as a residence, flagship and tender providing accommodation.
In 1922 she was saved for the nation and placed permanently into dry dock where she remains today, visited by 25 million visitors as a museum of the sailing navy and the oldest commissioned warship in the world.
Source: Royal Navy National Museum