It is a sunny day in July 1759 in the busy dockyard at Chatham. Sounds of sawing and banging rise above the workmen's chatter. In front of you, set on huge blocks, lies an enormous piece of timber – at least 45 metres long. It must be the bottom of a ship, the keel. You take a step backwards to get a better view and bump into an important-looking man with rolls of parchment under his arms. He is Sir Thomas Slade, the ship designer.

“Impressed, little 'un?” he says. “You haven’t seen nothing yet – this is the keel of the Victory, she's going to be the bravest, fiercest ship to ride the waves. Why, she’ll have 100 guns when she's complete! She’ll take another six years to build, but if you can’t wait that long have a look at the model in my workshop.”

You follow him inside wondering whether the Victory will win any famous battles. If only you could go forward in time and find out!

To make the Victory model you will need…

• Scissors
• Glue, staples or sellotape
• Colouring pens

What to do...

• Download and print out the instructions and the ship templates, hull and rigging (below).
• First colour in the ship, then construct the model following the instructions.

High quality (PDFs)

• Instructions (292KB)
• Ship template - hull (228KB)
• Ship template - rigging (361KB)

Low quality (HTML/JPEGs)

• Instructions (22KB)
• Ship template - hull (1) (25KB)
• Ship template - hull (2) (22KB)
• Ship template - rigging (1) (31KB)
• Ship template - rigging (2) (30KB)

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