Portsmouth, view of the harbour

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Portsmouth

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A view of the harbour with brick buildings and present-day ships (far left).

The Georgian storehouses with the clocktower (above), built 1763-90; the equipment was loaded into them from the landward side (visible here), and collected by boats from the opposite side (then at the water’s edge to the left of the photo); the building is now the National Museum of the Royal Navy. To the right, the masts of the Victory (Nelson’s flagship at Trafalgar, built at Chatham) may be seen.

In the naval manufactures producing the equipment for the Portsmouth ships, an important breakthrough in industrial history took place: the engineer Marc Brunel (the father of Isambard Brunel) invented a set of machines manufacturing pulley blocks, each performing one step of the process (1806): this was an early example of mechanisation.