Hampshire Countryfile


Hampshire

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The ancient oak forests of North Hampshire.

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Hundreds of years ago, wood from here was on the move,

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sent to the boatbuilding shores of Portsmouth Harbour.

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To celebrate that journey, a new 50-mile trail has been set up.

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The Shipwright's Way winds from Alice Holt Forest

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at its northern tip, to Portsmouth in the south.

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And today, I'm walking a section of it,

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starting here at the city's historic dockyard.

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Nowadays, there aren't many of these around,

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but I have managed to find a shipwright

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that's still gainfully employed, and this is his ship.

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Just a small one!

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HMS Warrior. Commissioned in 1858,

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she was the largest warship in the world,

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60% bigger than her French counterpart

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and with an iron hull four inches thick.

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Bob Daubeney is the shipwright of this ironclad beauty.

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So, Bob, what exactly is a shipwright?

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A shipwright, you take the term "wright",

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and it's someone who manufacturers things.

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You've heard of the term "blacksmith",

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and you had smiths that worked in metal,

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you've got wrights, who tended to work in wood,

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so you had a boatwright, a shipwright,

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a cartwright, a wheelwright, there's a whole series of trades and skills.

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And even though she's no longer at sea, then,

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-is it a full-time job for you?

-Definitely, yes.

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It keeps me on the go all the time.

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-I've been here 15 and a half years now.

-Really?

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We've repainted the whole of the deck, 1.07 million,

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-two and a half years.

-Goodness me!

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You've got to keep it watertight, got to protect the infrastructure.

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It doesn't get any better than being a shipwright on a vessel like this.

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Can you imagine coming to work here every day?

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Oh! She is incredibly important. Did she see much action?

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She never fired a shot in anger. She became a deterrent.

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She had been created to such a strength,

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there was nothing they could do to combat her.

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But when it comes to keeping Warrior shipshape,

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not all the jobs fall to Bob.

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-You all right, Ian?

-OK!

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Now, 60 foot up, Ian is replacing these things.

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They're called the dead eyes and they connect all the rigging

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to the ship and as you can imagine, at that height,

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they get exposed to all of the elements, so they need an overhaul.

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And the only way to reach them is by climbing the rigging.

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Climbing!

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So, that's where I'm heading.

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-Getting there now.

-All right, mate?

-Hello, Ian, you all right?

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-I'm good, how are you, all right?

-Yeah, nice to see you close up!

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It doesn't bear thinking about, a young lad climbing up here

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-in a storm.

-Yeah, tell me about all that!

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Goodness me, but what a view up here!

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What are we doing with these dead eyes?

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As you rightly point out, these are exposed to all the elements.

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This one here, we've cut away all the timber surrounding it.

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Yeah. So, it's nice and loose now, all ready to come out.

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It's important to kind of preserve all those details,

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because you want this ship to kind of transport you back to

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sailing down the Channel to go and stand up to the French

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-and all of that.

-Yeah.

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OK, so what it wants to do is slide up this way towards me a bit.

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-OK.

-I don't know how loose it's going to be.

-There you go.

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-We've got to have a bit of luck sometimes.

-That's it.

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-It's free.

-That's it.

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-There's some weight in it, like, isn't there?

-Yeah.

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You can see the amount of rust that's built up here,

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-you can see the way the timber's de-laminated.

-Uh-huh.

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It's done well, it's served its purpose,

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but everything comes to an end eventually.

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It does make you think, Ian, the amount of people

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that will have been up here doing this job over the years -

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you know, pretty privileged, aren't we?

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Well, yeah, it's nice for us to be able to show what we do.

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-So often the jobs are out of sight for everyone.

-Yeah.

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We like to show what goes on up here.

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I'll be sticking around in Portsmouth's historic docks

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to see how new technology is helping preserve

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our most celebrated battleship.

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We're exploring the Shipwright's Way,

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a long-distance trail in honour of Hampshire's shipbuilding past.

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It runs along this section of coast,

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before passing north into the Hampshire Hills.

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It's where I've got a behind-the-scenes appointment

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at the Royal Marines Museum. Hi, lads.

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-ALL: Hello.

-Not with them, sadly!

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LAUGHTER

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I'm in search of an object that was instrumental

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in a secret military operation that began here in Hampshire.

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It was labelled the most courageous raid of World War II.

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This is it.

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No, it's not a flatpack set of shelves,

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it's actually a 70-year-old Mark II military kayak.

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It's made of wood, with collapsible canvas sides

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and it had to be collapsible, because it had to be transportable.

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In 1942, a newly formed detachment of the toughest soldiers

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were deployed on a mission in kayaks exactly like this.

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The assignment was perilous.

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The target was situated right at the heart of a port

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in German-occupied France.

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The kayaks were nicknamed cockles and the men who took part

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in this remarkable mission became known as the Cockleshell Heroes.

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Southsea Beach was where the formative heroes

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learned to paddle in the autumn of 1942.

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Kayaks had been recognised as the perfect tool

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to deal with the enemy threatening our island nation.

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I'm meeting Royal Marine historian Mark Bentinck.

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Give me some texture as to

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what was happening at that point in time, 1942?

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Well, 1942 was a really bad year for Britain.

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Our fortunes were at an all-time low.

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But there was one particular problem, in that

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individual German ships, fast merchant ships,

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were bringing key materials into occupied Europe from the Far East.

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25,000 tonnes of natural rubber had been imported through Bordeaux.

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If we could intercept or damage this commerce, this would be very useful.

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It was a year when desperate measures were required

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to survive and actually win the war.

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A team of Marines had volunteered for hazardous service,

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unaware of the risky task that lay ahead.

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They would serve under an experienced kayaker,

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the strong-minded Major Hasler, nicknamed Blondie.

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Hasler was quite a character, the leader of the group -

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-what was he looking for in his team members?

-Initiative.

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People who could do the right thing without being told what to do

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and without waiting for orders. People with endurance and toughness

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and determination, who weren't going to give up

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and could survive the very tough conditions

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of canoeing in enemy country in the winter.

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Only later would the mission be divulged.

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Codenamed Operation Frankton,

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the secret raid would strike in early December, 1942.

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A team of a dozen men led by intrepid Blondie Hasler

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boarded naval submarine HMS Tuna

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for what they thought was a training exercise.

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It was only in the secure confines of the submarine

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that the truth was revealed.

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They were to raid Bordeaux and attack German merchant ships,

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a task so dangerous, the chance of survival was tiny.

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The kayaks would be stored in the torpedo hatches of the submarine

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and then launched right here, at the mouth of the Gironde estuary.

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The men would then have to paddle 100 miles

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towards the city of Bordeaux,

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evading the enemy and their guns along the way.

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The goal was to attach limpet mines, like this one,

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to the merchant ships that were in the port.

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It was a ridiculously dangerous and risky mission.

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Almost as soon as they'd left their sub,

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they were caught in a huge riptide,

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the first of many hazards that wiped out members of the team.

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But as they approached Bordeaux, Hasler, the leader

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and the most experienced kayaker, was still in charge.

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He had learned to paddle as a child, here on Canoe Lake in Portsmouth.

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And that's where I'm about to get a taste of what their voyage was like.

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I'm taking to the water in a replica cockle

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with ex-Marine Ray Cooper.

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Ray, they're not that comfortable, I have to say.

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You're only in it for a short time.

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The guys that paddled these in 1942

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had to make the best of the six-hour tide,

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so they would be in them for six hours,

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it was December, the weather was very, very cold.

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They had to do everything, they were eating,

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sleeping, you name it, in this space.

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Everything, this was their workspace.

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After that treacherous journey, two kayaks made it to the port,

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but did they actually manage to damage any ships?

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Yes, five ships were damaged and one was sunk,

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which helped boost morale and also destroy the Germans' morale.

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It made the Germans aware that they could be infiltrated,

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which meant that they then had to bring more men into the area,

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away from the actual front.

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Only two men survived the journey back to Britain.

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Blondie Hasler, the leader, was one of them.

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Despite the lives lost,

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Hasler's chancy undertaking had been a success.

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But there's an astonishing twist -

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Hasler and his men weren't the only team of British secret forces

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targeting the merchant ships in Bordeaux.

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Five months earlier, the Special Operations Executive

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had sent their own team in by parachute,

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Operation Scientist,

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and their job was to blow up the same ships at the same docks.

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Historian Tom Keene discovered another raid on the same port.

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They were meant to liaise and they didn't.

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So, Hasler's team went in, believing that was the only way to attack

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those targets, and it manifestly wasn't.

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On the night that Hasler's men finally reached Bordeaux,

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this team, the Scientist team, were on their final recce

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and what they were going to do was not paddle 100 miles down the river,

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they were going to walk through the dock gates with passes,

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with bombs in their knapsacks, and put their bombs on the boats

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-from the shore side.

-Disguised as what?

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Painters and workmen. They had the passes.

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Does this mean, looking back now,

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that it was a pointless mission in every way?

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No, it doesn't.

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The Cockleshell Heroes raid became THE iconic

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Royal Marines small boat raid of the Second World War.

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The Germans described it as the greatest raid of the war.

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I think post-war,

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Operation Frankton, the Cockleshell Heroes' raid,

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changed the Royal Marines' perception of themselves.

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It became the iconic symbol of all that they do best.

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And at the Royal Marines Museum, the story of the Cockleshell Heroes

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is still inspiring the military elite of today.

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I've been taking in the historic dockyards of Portsmouth,

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the home of the iron-hulled warship HMS Warrior

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and the legendary HMS Victory,

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a superstar of battleships.

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Commissioned in 1778,

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the Victory is the only surviving battleship to have fought

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in the American War of Independence, the French Revolutionary War

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and, most famously, the Napoleonic wars,

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and she served on the forefront of naval warfare for 34 years.

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It was from HMS Victory that in 1805

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Lord Nelson led the Battle of Trafalgar.

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He defeated the French, who were never again a threat to our island,

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but in doing so paid the ultimate price.

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In the ferocity of battle, he was shot and killed.

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And it's because of Nelson's death

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that she's one of the most famous ships in the world.

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HMS Victory is now over 250 years old,

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and as you can see, well, she is in need of a bit of work.

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But she is about to undergo a £50 million restoration project

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and some 21st-century technology is going to be used

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to re-image this Georgian battleship in a digital age.

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Lasers. Scanning every surface,

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these machines are creating a 3D model of Victory

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to help curator Andrew Baines

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look after this vulnerable national treasure.

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She is inherently biodegradable,

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she's made of natural materials that will rot.

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She's designed to operate in the most hostile environment

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known to man at the time - the sea - for four or five years

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before you bring her back and give her very extensive repairs.

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So this is the Great Cabin on Victory.

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This is where Nelson would have been based and quartered.

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We're stood in the day cabin part of his quarters

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and this is Nelson's breakfast table.

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-And we're going to sit here, at Nelson's table?

-At Nelson's table.

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What a feeling. It is, you can feel it. It's heavy, isn't it?

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She's weighted with history.

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Why did you decide to go for laser?

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When we decide we need to take some planks off the ship

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or we need to lift the mass out,

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we can actually model the effects of that work

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and work out the best approach we can take

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so we don't put the ship at any risk

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and we don't do anything that is going to damage the ship.

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-So you can, kind of, do the work in the computer first...

-Yeah.

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-..without actually making any mistakes?

-Yeah.

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It looks incredibly detailed.

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I mean, what level of accuracy are we talking here, Andrew?

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The level of accuracy we've got, it's down to the millimetre.

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If we were to stand here with a tape measure doing that,

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it's going to take us a while.

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So even all these little chips and flecks and all that stuff...?

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Yes, it can feel all that, the original markings on the timber.

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It can pick those up as well. Very, very detailed.

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Victory's old plans have been outdated...

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by this.

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A view of HMS Victory that's never been seen before.

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The beginning of a venture to preserve

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one of the most treasured relics of our naval past.

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