Assessing the physical state of the fore topsail of HMS Victory

Marine textiles form a vital part of our cultural heritage. Some extant sails and surviving sail fragments in museum collections are hundreds of years old. The Victory sail, from the early 19th century, was not only subject to the ravages of the marine environment during its working life but has since suffered further deterioration during storage and display. To determine the optimum protocol for future conservation, display and storage, it was essential to determine its current physical state. The physical properties of sailcloth are influenced by a number of factors, many of which relate to its complex hierarchical structure. The Victory sail is composed of linen, a bast fibre comprised of cells reinforced with fibrillar microcrystalline cellulose within hemicellulose and pectin matrices. Lignin serves to cement aggregates of these ‘ultimate’ cells together. At the higher levels of the hierarchy, fibre bundles are spun together as yarns, which in turn form the weave structure of