The bumble-bee stripes of orangey brown and black of one of the most famous ships in the world, Horatio Nelson's HMS Victory on which he fought and died at the battle of Trafalgar in 1805, may have to be repainted after a team of historic paint detectives recovered hundreds of fragments of the original paint surfaces.
"What you see today is largely an early 20th century invention of what an 18th century warship looked like," said Michael Crick-Smith, a founder with his partner Ian Crick-Smith of the conservation institute at Lincoln University specialising in historic decorative finishes.
The pair claim that the colour they describe as "that hideous orange" is part of much later attempts to restore the ship when it had become a symbol of British naval power. The cherished legend is that it was repainted in his favourite colours at Nelson's orders, when the already elderly ship, launched in the 1760s when he was just a school boy, was refitted as his flagship.
But the Crick-Smiths' analysis – which in some places involved disentangling 72 layers of paint – suggests the hull was originally mostly black, with a lot of varnished timber above the water line. It was later partly repainted in an ochre shade, probably before Nelson took it over, but a much paler colour than the present vivid shade.
The orlop deck, where desperate attempts were made to save Nelson's life after a French sniper's bullet went through his shoulder and lungs and lodged in his spine, leaving him drowning in his own blood, was a pale creamy stone colour. The surgeon's cabin and the other small cabins on that deck were a surprisingly grand two shades of blue – good quality paint, compared to the cheap limewash and poor quality oil paint used in much of the ship.
The spaces now shown as Nelson's admiral's cabin, and the captain's cabin of Thomas Hardy (the "kiss me, Hardy" in whose arms Nelson died) are entirely comparatively modern reconstructions, but the Crick-Smiths are convinced from contemporary sources that they would have been much plainer, and probably painted a light blue.
"These were working spaces, not country houses at sea as they appear now," Michael Crick-Smith said.
The good news for the current guardians of the ship, the National Museum of the Royal Navy at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, is that the Crick-Smiths discovered a remarkable amount of original material.
The upper decks are almost entirely reconstructions, but on the lower decks they discovered mainly original timber and hundreds of patches of original paint, dating all the way back to the very first paint scheme in 1765.
They also picked through a warehouse full of thousands of samples of timber removed from the ship in generations of repairs, and found many more. One sample of the ochre paint – "diabolical quality", Ian Crick-Smith said - came from an old capstan which was once used as a plinth for a bust of Nelson at Windsor Castle.
The Crick-Smiths came to the project after a heated Twitter exchange about some of the most unusual objects ever brought to the BBC's Antiques Roadshow: two battered wooden columns, claimed to have been taken from Victory at the period of the battle. Unfortunately their work demolished the claim: the timbers are from a ship, but not Victory.Their research is part of the most comprehensive restoration project since the ship was built at Chatham and the findings of the research will be taken into account.
After the battle, according to naval legend Victory was only saved from being broken up through pleas from the wife of Captain Hardy.
Victory has a unique status, still a commissioned warship of the Royal Navy and the flagship of the Second Sea Lord, and a museum in the Historic Dockyard in Portsmouth, where her neighbour is the new museum housing the Mary Rose, the flagship of Henry VIII.
In the early 20th century, after the centenary celebrations for the battle revived interest in the ship, a national campaign raised funds to restore its appearance in Nelson's day, and preserve it in drydock in Portsmouth.
It had a narrow escape there in 1941 when a German bomb fell between the hull and the dock wall, but did far more damage to the stone than to the timber.
Years of conservation work remain, at a total cost estimated at up to £40m.
It is now in the care of the National Museum of the Royal Navy, which has a gallery telling the history of the ship and the battle. The museum is also about to open additional galleries, with a wealth of objects from the collections on display for the first time including HMS Hear My Story, a permanent exhibition on the history of the navy over the past century, and Racing to War, a temporary centenary exhibiton on the navy in the lead up to the outbreak of the first world war. Both exhibitions open to the public on 3 April.