Could You Survive A Napoleonic Invasion In A Victorian Coastal Fort?

Imagine that we are in the middle of the 19th century, since the end of the Napoleonic Wars, peace between Great Britain and France had been assured for almost half a century and yet the threat of an imminent

invasion

never seemed too far away, which is why thousands Armed forces and volunteers are accompanied by artillery. Men, engineers and army officers were summoned here in 1860 to build and occupy these gigantic

fort

ifications. Should the dreaded day come when French ships appeared on the horizon, more than 70 polygonal

fort

resses would be built or improved as part of a commission in 1859 instigated by the prime minister.

Lord Paliston, who shared the concerns of most of Britain's naval and military commanders that Britain was rapidly falling behind foreign powers and would be unable to defend itself against an attempted

invasion

. The fortresses known as Palmon Forts were spread across the United Kingdom, mainly in strategically important

coastal

areas. each would cost the treasury an enormous amount of money, require a significant workforce to build and a large group of military volunteers to manage. In this video I will be stationed at Fort Nelson, one of five gigantic fortifications built atop the ports. down. hill overlooking Portsmouth Dockyard. I'll find out what it took to design and build a fort like this and our job is to build these absolutely gigantic ditches.

If you're French invaders and they shoot these things at you, it's going to be pretty nasty, isn't that how the recruits were selected and deemed fit for service? They will test your physical appearance down to the deformities of the nether region, say, and what life was really like for those stationed on the front coastline of Victorian Britain in In 1815, Britain had emerged from the Congress of Vienna as the main financial, military and colonial power in the world. Napoleon was in exile never to return to the continent and the prospect of a prolonged period of peace seemed possible for relations between France and Britain, whose mutual hostility between them had defined much of the last millennium and had softened. enormously.

The two had even been allies in the Crimean War, but there was a problem: the newly elected president and self-proclaimed Emperor Napoleon III was making British politicians and military leaders nervous. He stepped in where his uncle had failed him. Napoleon III's expansionist foreign policy, which saw his Empire deepen its colonization of Africa and his desire to expand the French Navy and improve its capabilities, caused alarm in Bells, prompting an official Royal Commission into the defense of the United Kingdom in 1859. Instigated by Prime Minister Lord Paliston, a huge fortification program was immediately put into action to defend Britain's arsenals and naval bases and thousands of navies, essentially construction workers, were employed to build or improve the forts as quickly as possible, which helped me delve deeper into the background.

Behind the construction of the fort was curator Richard Ruido, so here we are outside Fort Nelson. I am dressed as the Navy, one of the construction workers employed to build this magnificent fort. The first question is about location. I guess it has something to do with that. A big old dockyard down there, yes, Portsmith was really the main dockyard, maybe it still is for the raw Navy, so since the 12th century it has always been defended. It is centrally located on the English Channel, giving you easy access to all support services. can be there, then we have vling, which is the food and supplies, you have ammunition, you have the main shipyard for repairs and of course at that time, the Royal Navy has always been our first line of defence, it is key along with the canal, but it needs a base, it needs a home and if we lose that home, we lose that defense, then the Navy has nowhere to protect itself.

It's interesting right now when this Royal Commission into the defense of the United King comes out in 1859. I mean, how likely? it's a French invasion right now, I mean, we just had the Crimean War and we were allies, but they clearly thought it was enough to want to build this, we were allies, but Napoleon III had come in and had been elected initially. as president and then became emperor in the late 1850s and that was a problem because he was the nephew of Napoleon the first, so there is a great fear in Britain that he will then try to avenge Draa and of course W, but also to The Crime Here what we noticed was that the French were much better than us, so the army was much better, it was better.

Leed is better equipped, the Navy was better, they had the first use of battleships, so the French had built L gu which was the first Ocean Ironclad in 1858 and that meant that in the Battle of Kinan at the end of the Crimea it was the first use of battleships, but they were French battleships, so they towed batteries full of these iron protected gun platforms basically and the wooden ships were useless and suddenly we realized that the war was far behind us and that the French and the great almighty army were a real threat of invasion. It's ironic that we're almost catching up at this point and yet the structure of this almost jumps back to how you'd see it. them in the Napoleonic type here this polygonal structure tell me a little more about the design of the fort itself, well the design as you say polygonal and we actually used some French techniques, so there is a capan coming out into the ditch with very angular sides. but on its own the for is useless because you have the rest you

could

just bypass it and go around it so its built in a system of forts around the ports with a ring around it and this was designed. from the Royal Commission in 1859, where they examined the defences, no money had been invested in fortifications and if you think about the older castles and the medieval castles, they are very tall, yes, very big and thick walls, but with the arrival of the artillery and gunfire, of course, if you hit a wall, it's quite easy to make a hole and a gap there also saps that are trenches that go up to the wall so you can dig and that defeated practically all the other fortification structures, for which the fort, as you can see, is actually dug.

Downwards it is slightly sunken, yes, so it has been dug into a hole. We're looking at the weaker side, so we're looking at all the brick work, which is very vulnerable, as I was saying, to artillery fire, so the main defensive side is the other one. side towards the northern side because the real threat was that the French

could

land further up the

coastal

ring, surround and then attack the ports from the north. The actual cost of all the forts was around 1 million 4 million, that is for the entire country, yes. 4 million of that was just for the Portsmith forts, so you can see that's the percentage around Portsmouth because the ports are as important, as critical and expensive as defending the dockyard in Portsmouth might have been to build one let alone multiple forts around the port.

Being a monumental task, the job fell to the Armed Forces, a community of manual workers with knowledge and experience in building public infrastructure, whether canals, tunnels, railway lines or, in this case, military fortifications, the first operation for these workers would dig huge trenches. on the land surrounding the building, which would eventually extend 19 acres at the top of the downhill ports, a job as Marcus Harrison's visitor service supervisor at Fort Nelson assured me that it was no easy task, so after this Commission in 1859, two years later, in 1861, we are all brought here and our job is to build these absolutely gigantic trenches AB, I mean, tell me a little bit about what the process was like in doing that, okay, so the navi He was famous for many things, his equipment was the shovel and the pickaxe, the particular purpose. of this trench is to prevent direct enemy access from what we call the counterscarp, which is the wall or face opposite the fort itself, so to dig on this scale you are talking about 60 feet wide and 40 feet deep Yes I can use Imperial wow, the length on this face on the Western Wall here is 600 feet at less than 200 MERS, it is huge, absolutely huge and would have required a workforce of several hundred workers or armadas as they were known for name. of navigation, then the 18th century canals were known as navigations and although today we use it more as a pejorative insult, they were skilled workers, they were taken from local farm hands, they were usually paid up to three. times more than a farm, which is notable and you can see the attraction, but they were a group of boards and they had a very tough reputation, so much so that from the 18th century to the mid-19th century they were a know themselves essentially how much how long it would have taken them to build this it's hard to say exactly we know it would have taken them several months probably close to or more than two years the math is reasonable but we don't know the exact dates but you're probably talking about a couple of years the fors took nine years to build total to build from 61 to 70 um, partly because we had to or because the government was slowly releasing money, we should say, it has been conjectured that these may have taken like just 3 years or so, depending, but yes, it took nine years because the government was reluctant to fully fund them from the beginning without any machinery to help them in their fight, digging 40 feet deep into the ground over such a vast area.

It must have required an unparalleled level of cooperation and perseverance, so I wanted to learn a little more about this enigmatic community of navies and what life was like for these navies, as you mentioned before, going from job to job. I mean you have to be very tough with this kind of work you do. The age range is interesting. We are talking between 10 or even less because they were families that worked together, so the children were always under 10 years old. In digging these trenches, they would play a role. It is questionable whether they were involved in the main work, but they would certainly play a role in the overall scheme of construction.

It is not unknown that men in their 60s and 70s were digging, it was a hard life, the diet was simple, they drank copious amounts, they were well paid and they had ALS, generally speaking, again they were uneducated, so their strength. Their authority, if you will, lies in their muscles, their ability to dig, and at best, they were actually so professional at their chosen tasks that they could employ people themselves, so it was not unheard of in the higher scales subra. They were basically yes, yes, and they changed what was known as Muk, so generally anything and everything was called Muk.

They used their shovels to do it. Traveling between jobs was known as walking. Interestingly, now we would call it a walk maybe or possibly. even backpacking today, but it was a term that was used throughout the 19th century, so walking from place to place, um, it was a hard life, a hard life it may have been, but the work done by the Armadas was essential to the The defense of Britain's most important naval base, not least because of its ingenious design, digging into the ground and using the existing topography of the hill to build the fort not only created an obstacle to potential French invaders, but also a nearly impregnable chalk wall that was virtually indestructible.

If the French could reach Wallace, any explosive charge would cause little damage and that would be the least of the attackers' problems. Demarcus, other than the ditches themselves, what other types of defensive structures exist there that would prevent French invaders from taking the fort? you rightly say that the ditch is substantial enough to slow the advance, but if they got that close, something may have gone wrong and they have their sights set on taking the fort and then ultimately using the hill, as We wish they wouldn't do it. right behind us here you have something called caponera.

Now the ponier is a structure that was built specifically to defend the ditch and the fort plays two parts, keeping the enemy at bay using the larger caliber cannons along the ramp. You parts uh but then you have to take care of yourself so if the enemy gets in the ditch or somehow attacks a mass in person this is what you defend against them so at the lower levels here you'll have 32 lbs. , they use buckshot which essentially turns the guns into shotguns, uh, two in the lower tiers would have originally been four guns intended for 24 pounders which were later changed as intended to 32 pounders, of which there were only four in the lower tiers, behind of us, here we have weapon loops. or weapon positions, somefunctions, that's right, that's right, so they essentially protect the detachments.

You didn't want anyone to sneak up and lay any charges against the gun positions or the larger caliber guns here to ensure flanking fire. These turn out to be the flanks. and I realized that it is not around everything because it is only in one key strategic point, absolutely correct. I mean, these guns here would have been able to rake the entire length of the trench and just around the far corner you have an equivalent of what they call a semi caponier or half caponier, right, uh, if you look right behind it, here we have something called a marina or poson gate, now that gate had an interesting purpose if the French or several of them had

survive

d whatever assault this had been.

The ladder used to access those people would have been lowered they would have retrieved the people and then questioned them accordingly which is why they put the door as high as they did just to clarify so this is if the French have come and there are potentially like a wounded soldier, then they could take them up the ladder and interrogate them and interrogate them, it was a bad day and it's just a testament to the correct design, you know, they could have made it all the way to the ditch, but if they do, there's just another level of intelligent defense. , like you said, it can, it can shoot all the way, plus it's so cleverly designed, it's a 19th century castle for all intents and purposes, it works on the same principle, uh, concentric castles. did uh in the medieval period.

Well, I can't even imagine the arduous nature of the work for the Navy, but of course, they wouldn't be the ones occupying the place, as they were simply employed to build it, so the people who were actually inside because they would have been the volunteers. yes, they would, yes, in fact, once the fort was completed in 1871, a garrison of around 200 volunteers from the newly established citizen armies of rifle artillery and part-time engineer corps, accompanied by army officers regular, it would have been the volunteers. looked at the fort in times of war, but no old recruits would be stationed here, volunteers would be examined to be deemed fit enough to serve, any mental or physical defects would be recognized and prevent men from joining the garrison and not feeling in top shape after even the thought of digging all those ditches I was a little anxious about my next inspection with Corporal Tom Davis, wish me luck, ah, Corporal Davis, ah, you must be the new volunteer.

I report for duty. Alright, good to see you, boy, well, you mentioned, uh, volunteers. It is important to make that distinction. Fort Nelson is not filled with regular British Army soldiers. We are volunteers. Well, that's partly true. Actually, there would have been a garrison here generally just to keep things going, but yeah, the volunteer force was an important thing. in the late Victorian era, so you're part of the 2nd Hance Volunteer Artillery Corps, which was formed in 1860 and would exist until 1908, when it was incorporated into the Territorial Army, when all those reforms came into effect, so tell me a little about you know where. where these volunteers came from and, more importantly, why they volunteered to be stationed at Fort Nelson.

It's an excellent question, in fact now all the people in the second hands were actually from the local area only in 1880, they could all be found within a few miles of their headquarters in Governor's Green and they are all from different backgrounds , mostly upper and middle class people, but there are also a lot of working class people there, so in terms of why they would volunteer, there are a lot of different reasons. It could be that they perhaps feel a patriotic duty to enlist; After all, it was the threat of Napoleon II of France that sparked the volunteer movement in the first place and during the South African War there was also a similar increase in recruitment.

Depending on the crisis that was happening, it could be, of course, that you wanted to avoid being sent overseas in recruitment because if you're a volunteer stationed here, you get out of that, but also, and this is, I think, the most interesting part . It has to do with your social position because all these people, from the officers to the lower ranks, have the same kind of background, so if you are a member of the volunteer convocation, that would raise your social status. Just that little bit gives you a little bit of an advantage in social standing over anyone else, so it's all part of this kind of jingoistic period, isn't it?

You can serve your country, but you don't have to go to different corners. of the Empire absolutely right, right, and let's talk a little bit about the volunteers themselves, you know, this is the Victorian period, not all of them are going to be an absolute maximum condition, you know what kind of things you're looking for that might prevent them from being able to volunteer, Well, we're looking for all kinds of things, really, um, it's important to note that actually, when you look at the illustrations and the photographs of the volunteers, to be honest, they're all in pretty good physical condition. with you they're not beefy bodybuilders or anything, but they all look healthy, some of them would have been dock workers that's for sure, maybe office workers and very few of them would have had military experience if you.

You have military experience, we'll have you in a heartbeat, and of course, being an artillery unit, we're looking for some muscle. You're going to be lifting a lot of weight, so we need your muscles to be in top shape. but there are actually two things we are looking for and the first is money, believe it or not, because you can't just rock Rock up and be part of the volunteers for nothing, you have to pay on your own. uniform and you buy it at the cost of the cloth and then you make it to fit you and that would cost you in 1863 about 10 Shing and 5 now that doesn't sound that bad really, but remember for a rural worker, you could earn as little as n shillings a week, that'll cost you a bit, won't it?

In fact, if you earn about 18 shillings a week, you'll probably be fine, because keep in mind. Keep in mind that you also have to buy your equipment, you have to pay a registration fee and also your annual subscription, so it is a big monetary investment, but for some members, the upper middle classes would certainly be fine, apart from the necessary expenses. Also seeking what were called efficiency badges were assigned to so-called efficient volunteers who had demonstrated competent knowledge of drill and artillery tasks, having completed 30 exercises in 18 months and attending the annual core inspection, but Basic aptitude tests were also carried out as a corporal.

Davis was about to demonstrate physical fitness tests on the lake. The Victorian era were incredibly strict. You will be tested on your physical abilities, your movement, heart diseases, how many teeth you have, even down to deformities of the nether regions. They would be, yes, they would. I know they would test you on that, but I'm sure you're fine. I'm fine, but of course now we're going to take the volunteer test. I'm warning you, in the regular army alone in 1860, 47% of recruits were eliminated for medical reasons, so are you ready to take the voluntary medical test? I'm ready, excellent care, good, you look on the same side as me, you must be about six feet tall.

I would be a waiter, that's right, excellent, so you pass the height. a good start, you would have to be about 5' 6 to be able to reach these arms up, now let me see what your chest height is. This is another important qualification. Oh, excellent look at that 43 in wonderful, very good, I could be proud. The minimum for that is around 32, so yeah, you're absolutely fine, Danny, and now your final test, welcome to the volunteers, that's all you need to do. You have the money for your uniforms and you have and are the right age of course, 17 years or older, then you are absolutely fit and well, that's all we need, so you just need to be above a certain height, have enough money to pay for your uniform, absolutely true, yes, you will be fantastic, but I'm going to give you You need something a little more to try because this will be a physically demanding job, so to test your physical abilities, I have something to show you, here We're, oh God, so this is the ammunition for a 64-pound artillery piece.

This is a pretty big ammo, so you see the bolts on the side, here I can. All of this goes inside the rifling to connect to the rifling, so as it's loaded and fired, these things connect to the slot that spins the shooting becomes more accurate now. I'm going to ask you to hold this to see what You're so strong, you're ready, get ready, I'm going to pass it to you, ready, I've got it, yeah, I've got it, oh, okay, wow, wow, yeah. That's deceptively heavy and you're actually doing great holding it on just one person, should I take it back?

Yes, there you have it, you are actually doing very well holding it with one person because this would actually require two people. I can see that yes, this is what I can say, my arms are already tight. You would put this in a crib and have two people with large straps lifting it together, so the fact that you can hold it on your own puts you in a very difficult situation. Once I pass my inspection, I would be sent to one of the multiple Barrack rooms located at the south end of the fort, where I would share a room with many other volunteers.

Volunteers would be expected to clean their equipment, shine their shoes, and shave their face except their upper lip as the new official volunteer. I felt like I had earned my first meal of the day in the kitchen. Food was prepared for the volunteers who would have dined and socialized in their barracks separate from the officers who dined in the mess hall while they were off duty, as I expected the menu was not as exotic as we expected. Nowadays, the volunteers would have started the day with what could be called a simple breakfast, some tea and bread would now be eaten every day, although occasionally with a portion of fish with bacon, probably canned and, if they were very lucky , jam as the main meal of the day, things got a little more interesting for dinner, remember that dinner in this period was served at lunch, the volunteers would have a form of meat that could be served as a stew, it could be roasted steamed, even baked, and they would have it with some potatoes and vegetables, they would have a dessert with plum, raisin or tapioca pudding, although believe me, it sounds more exotic than it really is and then, for tea and dinner, it was again tea and bread, while this menu doesn't exactly look like it's full of flavor and believe me, I've tried a Victorian dish. or two in my time, the important thing was that these volunteers were given enough calories and they needed them because, should the worst happen, they had to be not only mentally prepared but also physically prepared to defend the British coast from the French invaders.

Now their stomachs were full. It was time to start volunteering at Fort Nelson, it was essential that I understood the layout of the fort and in particular the weapons used to defend it installed at Fort Nelson were open in locations on the rifled muzzle loading ramp portions of 64 pounds. 6.6-inch guns and howitzers atop these three hacko casemates were built for a 7-inch rifled breach charge. Cannons. All of these weapons were the result of rapid new developments in artillery technology throughout the mid-19th century, so Richard, what do we have here? Look at this. a beast yeah well this is a 64 pounder so it's a rifled muzzleloader so it came from it wasn't actually designed at the beginning of the fort when the fort was first built in the 18 of 1860 and the first and the Commission in 1859. we were looking at 68 Pounders, which was still a soft ball, okay, so if you think artillery hadn't really changed and the fort was designed to have 30 of these around the ramp.

Parts in every way, but at the same time that that was happening, they We were looking at, uh, Armstrong was coming up with the new breach rifles and loaders, yes, of course, and they were brought in for the Navy because we said the Navy always had priority, they were the first L of Defense, so they would have the best and the newest weapons, so for the battleships they were HS Warrior for example, it was originally planned to have all these new, large, rifled breach magazines that would fire long distances and would be more powerful, but what they discovered was that the new design with Armstrong as he got bigger. caliber in sizes and projectiles there was a problem with the breach and there were many accidents so what they did was go back to the 68 pounder gun which had proven very well in the Crimean War, it was very cheap to produce so when the fort , as I said, when the fort was first designed, the 7 inches came to the fort and they used them for the defense of theflank and tell me about the ammunition that these new rifled artillery pieces would fire, it makes them much more Accurate, doesn't it?

They have those slots that allow for greater accuracy as new weapons arrived. There were a lot of obsolete weapons available, so what they did was take them and use them for ground service and Palisa, who was a cdle, decided in 1863. He came up with an ingenious solution which was to polish the inside of the barrel of the smooth ball and insert an iron tube that had grooves, which was the groove, so we say that they still have a loaded mouth, like a cannibal. you still charge at the end of the muzzle, you push the charge in and then around and then it activates with the rifling and turns the SP, which is more accurate than an infrared wall in terms of the evolution of artillery.

I mean the British in the Crimean War, they still have pieces of that kind of heart going back to the Napoleonic Wars, don't they? I mean, these just seem more modern to me, yeah, yeah, the Armstrong was the modern weapon, that was the one that was the way to go if you like the future and what he did was he did a buildup method, so it used different tubes on top of each other, in a varied system that made it stronger so you could take a more powerful load and propel yourself further, but of course with the problem with the gap, they took a little time to develop that, yes, in the interim between 1865 and 1880 they went to the rif muzzleloader, so this almost represents like the transition period.

This gun here does and it points where we are pointing because some people look at these forts and wonder why many of the artillery pieces are not facing towards the Portsmouth dockyard, they are facing inwards, they are facing inwards to avoid any threat from the north, so that any troops landing further along the coast could come. Advancing and attacking the fort from the north, the guns with the longest range would be on the wall around the top of the fort to fire at a Longer distance, which the rifling will do, will give you great distance. I have the mortars for the 13 inch Morts in the battery to cover the area in the meantime so they cover closer and they will launch explosive shells from the top so they cover all the bases here, right?

I guess that's a good point, isn't it, when you think that the French probably wouldn't be foolish enough to land their troops right at the Portsmouth dockyard? They could try to go around the port, so I guess it makes sense. apparently they were facing it in the wrong direction and of course the harbor and Anchorage were protected by other forts, so there is a ring of forts, everyone crossing the fire is crossing, so in each fort there are no gaps, no There is a way you can come. So Richard, it's a pretty gloomy day right now.

I guess volunteers like me would have to go up to these parts of the ramp and we would be in charge of handling these weapons. Yeah, you wouldn't actually be in charge, normally. have a Royal Artillery Non-Commissioned Officer who would be the knowledgeable professional, a right officer, a North Carolina non-commissioned officer, so he would provide the experience and the volunteers would have some knowledge, but they could be trained quickly and provide the manpower with the Uprising and the Carry Rape If you're French invaders and these things shoot at you, it's going to be pretty unpleasant, isn't it?

Yes, absolutely, with artillery now more lethal than ever, the numbers of casualties and injuries on the battlefield. The Crimean War had claimed the lives of approximately 500,000 men and, on the other side of the Atlantic, during the American Civil War, more than 600,000 soldiers and civilians had suffered the same fate. What didn't help at all was the state of the military hospitals. Weapons technology was evolving rapidly. Battlefield medicine. and nursing was rapidly being left behind when the Crimean War broke out, the British government suspected that the conflict would last at most several months, in reality it would last over two years and the fact was that the British Army was woefully unprepared for it.

The magnitude of the coming devastation was very evident in the day-to-day makeshift hospitals that were soon inundated with patience. It wasn't just the large number of people arriving with horrible injuries in Battlefield, but also the number of people dying. due to diseases such as typhus chera and dentry, in fact, more than 10 times as many soldiers died due to diseases than from their war wounds, something had to change and someone had to change it November 4, 1854, Florence Nightingale arrived in Turkey. with a group of 38 volunteer nurses from England what they saw moved them deeply in 1854 Erin uh Florence Nightingale arrives with a group of volunteers they arrive at scutari near Constantinople today Istanbul what do they see well if you can imagine that they have already done it They traveled a long road, it took them 13 days to get there, anyone who had to get to this hospital, it's not a real hospital in the way you would understand it, it's a support barracks, kind of a makeshift thing here and they've had to go up all the way up a very steep and muddy hill to get there in the first place.

When they arrive at Scutari hospital, it is quite desperate. They have had to shore up everything. They have hundreds and hundreds of men. there's a real problem with overcrowding, there's not enough beds, there's not enough beds and the beds are actually on the floor, so like this, here, like this, yeah, it's already pretty bleak, isn't it? Yeah, it's already a problem, um, the supplies they've had. a real problem with the supplies coming out in the first place, uh, so they have to make do with there not being enough blankets and everything else, uh, in the first place, and that's another thing, right?

I can see all the Bloods, I mean, this bedding wasn't being washed, wasn't there any kind of washing? No, and they ran out of supplies for that, so they can't even replace what they have. This time, historically, there's no real understanding of what hospitals are needed for, so that idea that we have now in modern terms of nursing and care in hospitals, that's not what was happening at the time, so you have that. but there's also a problem: they later find out that this hospital on this hill is actually on top of a manhole, so it's not pleasant at all.

She is investigating the sanitation and discovered that there is a dead horse carcass in the water. they are drinking from the water supply uh and that is now leaking uh so we have a real problem with their water supply uh and the toilets are overflowing uh so there is actually a good layer of sewage Also, for them not only They come with horrible W wounds, limbs torn off, they're drinking dirty water, yeah, and they haven't had a good supply of fresh water to begin with, uh, from the battlefield, so these guys, they've come, there's a big problem with the teeth, yes, there is a real problem, they have not received the nutrition, so they are actually having a problem with their gums, their gums are very loose, their teeth are falling out. it's not a good supply of healthy food, so now we're finding out that illness is a problem, it's not just the injuries they have in the first place, so Erin, you've painted a pretty bleak picture, what does Florence do?

Nighty Girl, what are the first steps she begins to take to try to make things better for these soldiers? Well, she's a social element, really the only thing that's really key about Florence is that she's very organized, so she likes everything in good order. order and she learned that through her kind of training with the nuns in Germany, so she sets out to give an order to the women that she has brought with them, so she actually gives them a uniform, so they often have a sash that would cross their bodies, they could have an apron and a very dark dress, so the apron can be changed regularly, so these are proper nurses, what were nurses like before?

Originally, as they were, people really. In hos in the hospital as they understood it, if they couldn't cure you then they considered you terminally ill or sent you to an asylum, there really wasn't an understanding of nursing as a profession, no, unfortunately it was. a lot more, um, people were known as drunks, uh, no, you don't know that well, everyone, no, um, and basically, if they did their bit, they could get paid in Jin, so there wasn't a real order for that in the hospitals of At that time, they weren't real nurses, they were sort of like camp followers just looking for a little extra alcohol.

Potentially, yeah, that's not really the person you want taking care of you when you have a Lim who is being rejected for good. However, the thing about her is that she set a very strict point of application, so the women who came with them had some kind of experience in some way and, in fact, to the point that people did get It moved away from our application process, including Mary SEO, with a greater focus on the practice of nursing as a profession along with stricter selection processes for applicants. Near Andale she had already begun to leave her mark.

But to really change the chances of the patient's life expectancy, she has to look beyond personal care, the hospital conditions are fine, so we go from a blanket on the floor essentially to a proper bed with fresh bedding. Yes, the transition of that is part of that organization that she was doing. She also began to have an understanding. from the fact that they would be in good order, they would start cleaning, she would organize the supplies to arrive and she has a good understanding that maybe we have a nice big Windows vent here, she opened the windows and all that kind of stuff. nice beds raised off the floor and understanding the space around a bed, but also space for the patient themselves, apart from that good sanitation, so you know medications, bandages, salt water to wash, clean and wash that type of thing, a little soap and things like that, absolutely fine.

I imagine this involves, I mean, a big overhaul of the entire system. Do we know how long it takes to go from lying on the floor with bloody sheets to a really nice bed with proper ventilation? Well, the truth is that it started almost from the moment she came back, so of course, unfortunately she was unwell when she came back from uh scutari and I would pretty much accept her at that time, but she continued writing what she actually did, she was very good in statistics. in addition to being organized, she began to understand the idea of ​​medical evidence, um and um, in about 1851, it was observed that about 8,000 people were being used or in hospitals using hospitals as they were, and then about 20 years later, there were around 20,000, which sounds bad because it's a big number, but it's actually a good thing, it means that the whole idea of ​​how the hospital works and what they used it for is completely different and that comes from their legacy, that and those are people. who needed attention anywhere are now in a specialized center to improve them.

I mean, it's almost like an 18th century Enlightenment, but with medicine, isn't it? Yeah, so I think she's the key point. is that she was also very good in terms of medical evidence, so she was one to review things that had been done, one to improve and how you would do things differently next time, for example, but she also recorded . She was a great statistician, so she always had a feel for the numbers and, in fact, she came up with this kind of diagram which we have a copy of here, yeah, and this is known as the rose diagram, OK?

And? Whats the matter, then? So the idea is that you can have a good visual idea. Obviously it's not a pie chart, but it's along the lines of that in terms of looking at the numbers and then where the problems actually lie, so do that. They lie about disinfection or that kind of thing and it just gives you a very quick overview, basically, the causes of mortality, the reasons why people die, and from that, you start to realize that it's actually It deals with diseases and poor sanitation, water, for example. one of the problems, um, as opposed to just the injuries, and that was largely the cause of a problem in Crimea, well, she certainly was extremely meticulous, right?

That's something I focus on a lot in In fact, when she was a big uh, she orchestrated the nursing and trained the nurses, she didn't do much care herself, except for the bedside element and she would sneak around the night to watch the soldiers, but um. It was really the organization and her attention to detail. A group of men who might be less concerned about the state of military hospitals than about the number of soldiers they had at their disposal. It was the officer class. The British Army in this period remained extremely regimented. and the garrison at Fort Nelson was no different, the officersStationed at the Fort they would have spent much of their time in their own private dining room, separate from the Army and the volunteers, now a volunteer like me is not supposed to be here and you can see why.

Compared to the ranks accommodation, the offices lived in a kind of relative luxury with their expansive view of Portsmouth Harbour, this room was furnished with a beautiful fine china glass cut mahogany table and comfortable dining chairs. In addition, the officers also had a separate room in which they could dine and had a bell to call the kitchen staff to bring them an excellent selection of cheeses and wines. In the courtyard below you can also see the remains of the water pump, this was part of Gale's 19 reforms and the general improvement of hygiene and public health during this period, the forts here were the first buildings locally in have flushing toilets and running water from taps.

Obviously this was mainly about keeping the army healthy and clean but it would also have been a luxury that the officers could enjoy too, the officers would probably have had their own toilet block and a separate space for bathing meaning they would not have This room was supposed to be full of rich aristocrats who disdained their lower ranks who lived in abject poverty, while at Fort Nelson normally the officers came from the upper classes or at least the upper middle classes, this was not the case in In fact, we have a list of commissioned officer occupations and they include a lawyer, a director of works at the shipyard, a wine vault manager and a yman farmer.

Having said that, if a volunteer like me were caught loitering in this room without permission, they could expect punishment. and inside and there discipline was strictly enforced, if you broke the rules at Fort Nelson you could expect to be punished with anything from drunkenness and bad discipline to theft and assault, and you could end up in one of these cells in the guard room from Fort Nelson in 1871. When the first regular garrison was stationed here at Fort Nelson, the volunteers became subject to force law regulation, this made them subject to the articles of war and ACT mutinies even while they trained for a few years.

Later, in 1879, the Army Discipline and Regulations Bill applied army punishments to Force volunteers. Common military punishments in the late Victorian army included loss of rank, fines, loss of privileges, additional duties, and punishments involving exercise of up to 4 hours with heavy equipment each day. Short-term confinement of a single day, either in barracks blocks or imprisonment for up to 21 days, was also a practice and, in extreme cases, volunteers could be led by court from gun platforms and ditches to kitchens. and prison cells. Fort Nelson really felt like a self-contained Haven, but there was one crucial and spectacular design feature within this palm fort that I had yet to see.

Fortunately, the severity of the punishment for being caught in the mess of the office was not as bad as I had feared and with my release came the time to head underground now, as you have seen, the strong of Palmon were absolutely armed to the teeth with The latest weapons and artillery, so not only did they need a place to store all that gunpowder and ammunition, but they also needed a way to quickly transport it to whatever part of the fort was needed, more than 19 acres of tunnels on Chalk Face heading south from their respective caponera.

The north tunnel extends 160 m, while the east and west tunnels are approximately 121 m long, as the entrance is already underground. We know that the Navies would have had to dig first to get there and then even deeper to build the tunnel and here we are inside the main tunnel of the North. The first thing that catches your attention is how incredibly extensive and well built it is. Considering that everything was dug by hand, the only machinery used was a railway line that went to the bottom of the hill and then a cart that brought the supplies to the site, so to speak, it was hard work for the Army. an extreme understatement and it wasn't just hard work, it was also dangerous.

We know of one Navi who actually died when he was hit by the car. Ironically, the tunnels had a remarkably modern safety feature to prevent fires from lighting up the magazines. Another tunnel runs around the edge where lanterns could have been placed, these would have shone through the glass windows into the warehouse itself, allowing the room to be illuminated without fire entering the warehouse proper, but obviously this feature of Security was only available once the tunnel was built. for navigation candlelight would have to be sufficient placed in makeshift holes in the wall to find out more about the enormous undertaking.

I informed my officer Tom Tom here we are mhm in the middle of this is the main northern tunnel, it's not. It's absolutely true, yes, it's impressive, isn't it? It's absolutely incredible, it's so extensive, tell me when, when were these tunnels built, so these tunnels were made during the time the fort was built, we don't know exactly in what order they did everything but the fort. It was built between 1861 and 1869 or so so it's somewhere between that 8 year period and tell me what the role of the Navy would be, I'm right, who would have to dig all this up by hand, yes absolutely true, yes, they.

I'd be down here with candles and lanterns and you can actually see all the spike marks you can on the walls here from where this happened because what you're seeing is actually the inside of the downhill passes so you've got chalk like rock main Ro, we also have these big veins of flint running through it and I also said it's absolutely incredible what the main use of these tunnels was, so actually these tunnels have two purposes, so the first job and maybe the most important thing is as storage for all the ammunition that would have been down here, so the main magazines are back in the tunnel, that way you would have two with all your powder and all the ammunition you would have had but the other function is a little more practical: it provides an easy and safe grip for the soloist to go from the barracks where we were before to the defensive positions of the fort without getting shot at all and I imagine it provides also good security in case there is some kind of artillery bombardment exactly right and that's what they expect, so you have the main Capon at one end where there are more weapons in locations and there are stairs further up in the back that lead up. up on the walls they can also get to wherever they need to be and you and you mentioned that this is not just a storage facility for all that incredible amount of gunpowder and ammunition that you will need for those huge charging cannons. uh it's also a quick way to transport it to where it's needed because they could be attacking, the French could be attacking from the east side or the west side, absolutely true and the other thing is that's also where a lot of the maintenance is done.

Also, for them, if you have a faulty powder barrel that you think could be dangerous, you can't work on that in the magazine or you'll risk blowing the whole thing up, so you have these little side quarters built into the Tunnel where you can carry a bad barrel aside, work on it, and hopefully then return it to the main magazine when it's repaired. Now some people think that these could actually connect all the Palmon Fors. That's a myth. Many people think that, um, but the only thing that connects only some of the forts is the reservoir that is located in this fort and connects to the other forts to provide fresh water.

I don't know where this myth of the connecting tunnels comes from, but it doesn't make much sense when you think about it because once you've taken one not only do you have access to all the others, but if the myth is true, you can take a straight way. line to the shipyards with it and that just doesn't seem like a very good defensive strategy to me, no, not at all, the tunnels under Fort Nelson epitomize the urgency of the palmistry commission to defend the British coast between 1865 and 1880 during 1 They were spent million in the forts designed to protect the Portsmouth dockyard, but by the time Fort Nelson was fully built in 1871, it had become obsolete a year earlier, the Prussian army led by Hull Von Molka had crossed the French border and was heading towards Paris with This Invasion: the threat of French troops landing on Britain's shores had all but evaporated and with it the purpose of the palmists' expensive concrete fortresses, regardless of whether Britain was ever really likely to be invaded or No, the risk of leaving its most important naval base unprotected was clearly considered. enough to use a significant amount of the treasury's treasure in the construction of these fortifications, aptly named pal must Follies, mainly because it became clear that they would never be used for their intended purpose and partly because they appear to be facing in the wrong direction;

However, they remain relics of a tumultuous time when ambitious leaders and monarchs sought to flex their muscles by expanding their empires at any cost. To us today, the idea that Britain could ever be invaded almost seems absurd and, in In retrospect, it is easy to use these forms to mock the former Prime Minister, but we must remember that Napoleon's rampage across Europe was still fresh in the memories of Paliston and Britain's most important military commanders, had it not been for the heroic victory at Trafalga, it is likely that Napoleon would have attempted a full-scale invasion, so I think it is unfair to use this thought and describe it as Palmeston's incredibly popular Achilles Hill.

One thing I am sure of is that building this fortification and Manning would not only have been incredibly strenuous but also downright monotonous. Let's hope we never need a garrison stationed here again. Fort Nelson was finally dismantled in 1907 and later used as accommodation during the First World War. It was used by British troops waiting to be embarked on the Western Front and in 1938, when the world was on the brink of another deadly conflict, it was converted into an anti-aircraft ammunition depot with 10 large magazines built on the parade ground. A DEC after World War II, the fort had been completely abandoned after years of vandalism and neglect.

Fort Nelson was eventually sold in 1979 and became part of the Royal Armories in 1995, open to the public and explored by over 100,000 visitors each year. Thank you for watching this video in history. Visit the YouTube channel. You can subscribe right here to make sure you don't miss out on any of our great movies. are dating or, if you're a true history fan, check out our hit special dedicated to the History Channel. you're going to love television