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Hms Victorious (1808)The second HMS ''Victorious'' was a 74-gun third-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy. She was launched at Portsmouth in 1808, just five years after the first of the lineage was broken up. Her first action came the year after her launch, as part of the Baltic Squadron, in which she assisted in the bombardment of the port of Flushing in what is now the Netherlands. the naval bombardment was just a part of a much large operation. The land force consisted of some 30,000 men. The objectives were rather simply, to assist the Austrians by invading the Low Countries and to destroy the French Fleet at their believed location of Flushing. The town of Flushing was actually seized, but the whole invasion soon became irrelevant and pointless, for the French Fleet had actually escaped to the port of Antwerp and the Austrians had been defeated and were negotiating peace with the French. Over 4,000 British soldiers were killed during the expedition, 106 due to combat, the rest because of an illness known as Walcheren Fever. Her deployment to the Mediterranean, saw Victorious have her first skirmish against a French warship came in 1812, against the French 74-gun Rivoli. The ship was eventually defeated with much of her crew being killed and wounded. The Rivoli was captured once the skirmish came to an end and she later served in action as a Royal Navy warship against the French. The Victorious won the lineage its first battle honour during this engagement. After service in the West Indies, Victorious returned to the United Kingdom in 1814, for harbour service that would last until she was the rest of her career, until she was scrapped in 1861. See HMS Victorious for other ships of the name. Victorious
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