How Do You Lift a 30,000-Pound Mast From a Warship Built a Record-Breaking 261 Years Ago? With a Really, Really Big Crane

HMS “Victory” served in the American Revolution, the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. It’s the world’s oldest warship still in commission—but it’s in desperate need of repairs

Ellen Wexler | Writer and Special Projects Editor

May 1, 2026

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After months of planning, workers arrived at the dockyard ready to carry out their mission: removing the foremast from HMS Victory, the world’s oldest warship still in commission. They needed to ensure that the mast—which weighs more than 30,000 pounds—wouldn’t damage the 261-year-old vessel.

First, shipwrights below the deck detached the mast from the Victory, which is stationed at the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard in England. A massive crane then lifted the pillar into the air and carefully lowered it onto the dockside, where it will be repaired as part of a $57 million restoration effort.

“We’re going to reveal parts of Victory that were last seen by the 18th-century shipwrights who built her,” Andrew Baines, executive director of operations for the National Museum of the Royal Navy, says in a statement. “It feels like we’re shaking hands with that team from across the centuries.”

The operation took place overnight between April 27 and 28. The foremast is more than 75 feet tall, making it the second-largest mast on the ship. The mizzen mast and bowsprit will be removed in the coming days. The vessel’s main lower mast, which measures 105 feet long and weighs more than 57,000 pounds, was removed in 2021.

The restorations are part of a project called the Big Repair, which marks a century since the ship was moved to dry dock. The Victory will be covered in scaffolding for the duration of the project, and all masts will return to the vessel in 2033.

In the meantime, visitors will still be allowed on board the warship, though the Victory won’t look quite the same without its masts. The wrought-iron structures had been on the ship since they were installed in the 1890s, when they replaced the rotting wooden originals.

But the Victory’s history stretches back much further than that. Launched in 1765, the Royal Navy vessel was built with more than 2,000 oak trees. Believers of sailing superstitions considered the name unlucky, as another ship called the Victory had sunk in 1744, killing everyone on board.

Commissioned in 1778 during the American Revolution, the Victory is best known for its role in the Napoleonic Wars. It was Horatio Nelson’s flagship during the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar, in which 27 British ships defeated a fleet of 33 French and Spanish vessels. Nelson, who was wounded in combat, died a few hours after the battle, but his victory cemented Britain’s status as the strongest naval power in the world.

The Victory was badly damaged at Trafalgar, and it underwent repairs upon its return to England. In 1893, the warship was fitted with masts taken from HMS Shah. Today, they’re thought to be the only 19th-century iron masts still in use. The vessel eventually became a tourist destination, and more than 30 million people have visited it since 1928.

These days, the Victory looms large in the popular imagination. Russell Crowe visited the vessel to prepare for his starring role as a Royal Navy captain in the film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), and it served as a filming location for Persuasion (1995) and Napoleon (2023).

The British Ministry of Defense transferred custodianship of the ship to the National Museum of the Royal Navy in 2012. About a decade ago, experts found that the Victory was collapsing under its own weight. The upper deck had been moving closer to the keel at a rate of roughly half a centimeter per year.

“Half a centimeter doesn’t sound [like] a lot, but when it’s been going on for 40 years and it’s accelerating each year, it’s concerning,” Baines told the Telegraph’s Ben Farmer in 2016. “Eventually it will get to a point when that’s unsustainable. No one is sure if that’s next Tuesday or in 100 years.”

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The Big Repair started a few years later. Experts have been carefully conducting structural renovations, removing decayed planking and constructing replacement parts. The removal of the masts is also a central part of the project.

Shipwrights, conservators, engineers and riggers worked together to make this week’s operation a success. After it wrapped up, Patrizia Pierazzo, the deputy project director, told the Guardian’s Steven Morris that the effort had been a “great start.”

“The team worked through some initial challenges,” she added. “But overall, the lift process was undertaken safely, and we now have the foremast securely removed from the ship.”

Ellen Wexler | | Read More

Ellen Wexler is a staff writer and special projects editor, digital, for Smithsonian magazine.