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Portsmouth's Royal Dockyard - traditional home of the Royal Navy and now a world-famous centre of maritime heritage. Here, Portsmouth Naval Heritage project features three famous ships from the history of sea warfare: Henry VIII's Mary Rose, Nelson's flagship HMS Victory and the Victorian iron clad HMS Warrior 1860.

The story of the sailors who manned those ships is told in the Royal Naval Museum, with galleries housed in elegant colonnaded storehouses - just part of a majestic legacy of buildings and docks dating back to the 15th century.

Warrior's sheer size - more than 400 feet long with masts soaring nearly 200 feet into the skyline - offers a breathtaking welcome for arriving visitors. Warrior is beautifully and accurately restored, as befits the pride of Queen Victoria's Navy. She claims her place in history as the world's first iron-hulled iron clad battleship. Four vast decks are filled with Victorian naval artifacts and the possessions of the crew in scenes that recapture a day in the 1860's.

Further back in time, Nelson's HMS Victory is the world's oldest surviving ship of the line. Laid down in 1759, she still serves as the flagship of the Commander-in-Chief Naval Home Command. A major tourist attraction since the 1920's, Victory gives an exciting impression of adventure and hardship in the days of sail and gunpowder.

The Mary Rose sank in battle against the French in 1545, watched by Henry VIII, and survived as a time capsule of life at sea in the 16th century. Raised from the seabed off Portsmouth in 1982, the hull now stands as tall as a four-storey building in a converted drydock, where visitors view her gleaming oak timbers, resembling some giant cutaway model of a ship.

Separately, the Mary Rose Exhibition displays object recovered from the ship. Special features include a walkthrough re-creation of a Portsmouth quayside scene in 1545 and fascinating audio visual shows.

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