Victorian coin found on Lord Nelson's ship to go on display

Lucky charms have been around for many years and this one has stood the test of time - more than 100 years!

Conservation workers have discovered a 127-year-old Victorian coin. It was placed under the mast of HMS Victory, which is known for being Lord Nelson's flagship, for good luck. It's the same ship in which he claimed victory at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 - though the coin was added after this.

The coin was found when the mast of the Royal Navy's oldest commissioned warship was removed for restoration work in May earlier this year.

It would have been worth a quarter of a penny at the time and would now have a value of just 0.1p!

The lucky coin will now go on display to mark Trafalgar Day, which is on the 21 October, at the National Museum of the Royal Navy (NMRN) in Portsmouth.

The tradition of placing coins under ships' masts is believed to date back to Roman times and it still continues today.

The coin, which dates back to 1894, matches the year when a new set of masts were installed on HMS Victory after they were transferred from another ship. They replaced old masts made from the Douglas Fir tree which had become rotten.

"I excavated it from the shim on the mast base plate with a leaf trowel and scalpel," said the NMRN's head of conservation Diana Davis who found the coin when she was examining the base plate of the mast after it had been lifted out.

The mast's removal was part of a 20-year project and it'll be analysed and conserved to ensure it is structurally secure and stable enough to be fully rigged.

"In the laboratory, I removed as much of the corrosion as possible without damaging the patinated copper alloy surface," Diana explained.

"There has been a little bit of loss to the coin's surface from the impact of the mast with upwards of 21 tonnes resting on it, but I was able to clean enough of the sound surface to uncover the lighthouse to the lower left side of Britannia, allowing us to date it as an 1894 farthing.

"It's been one of the more unusual projects I've worked on - being the first person to see the coin in over 120 years."

If the coin was still in perfect condition, it would have shown Queen Victoria's head on one side and Britannia on the other, with a lighthouse in the background, but the images are unclear because of corrosion.

"We had wondered if there would be a coin under the mast, to follow with naval tradition, and imagine our excitement when the coin was found and news rapidly spread through the team, who were sworn to secrecy whilst we conserved it and made plans to put it on display," said Rosemary Thornber who is the principal heritage adviser for HMS Victory.

"It's been a real privilege to research it and to see the damage that had been caused by the pressure from the mast sitting on it.

"Whilst on paper it's not particularly rare, the fact that it occupied such an intriguing place for so many decades, and now its imprint is part of Victory's fabric, makes it invaluable to us..."