Many thanks to Councillor Peter Edgar for the story below:

HMS Victory was moored on the Gosport side of Portsmouth Harbour from 1812 until 1922 except for periods of repairs in Portsmouth Dockyard. It was a short distance out into the Harbour off the Ferry Pontoon or slipway at the end of Gosport High Street. Most visitors necessary supplies would be rowed out to the ship from the Gosport Side of the Harbour by the locally licensed watermen. Their boats were known as 'bum boats.' These watermen are still licenced today under the Ferry Acts of 1809 and 1812 and I act as Chairman and Vice Chairman on alternate years of the Joint Board Gosport and Portsmouth Councillors that still licenses them but today the vessels have motors!

My father was ten years old in 1900 and he always referred to going to Portsmouth as "going round the Victory" and this was very confusing to me as a child as the Victory had always been in Portsmouth Dockyard in my lifetime!

When I was Mayor in 1997-98 I managed to have purchased a copy of an etching     by C E Holloway called "The Victory at Rest" and this clearly shows the ship at its location on the Gosport side of the harbour. Holloway was certain that the Victory was rotting away at its mooring and would have to be dry docked eventually if it was to be conserved so in 1888 he decided to draw it in the location that it was seen by the public for 110 years.