Mum swaps hospitality job for shipwright role on £42m HMS Victory: The Big Repair project

A mum who inherited her late father’s toolbox retrained as a shipwright and now works on the £42 million conservation of HMS Victory.

Betzy Shell, 38, from Portsmouth, spent more than a decade in hospitality before a long maternity leave prompted her to rethink her career.

When her daughter Charlotta, now nine, started nursery, she enrolled on a joinery course at the International Boat Building Training College, despite not knowing how to use a chisel or a plane.

She now works for the National Museum of the Royal Navy on HMS Victory: The Big Repair, a 10-year project due to finish in 2032.

Betzy’s role involves removing and replacing large wooden futtocks, which are structural timbers in the ship’s hull, combining traditional skills with modern tools.

She is one of four female shipwrights on the project and hopes her work will inspire more women to pursue careers in heritage boatbuilding.

Betzy has also been involved in outreach work with schoolchildren, introducing Year 9 girls to woodworking techniques and giving them a behind-the-scenes look at the Victory restoration.

“I go to work now, and I don’t dread Mondays, and I’m not dreading going back to work after a holiday,” Betzy told PA Real Life.

Betzy grew up in Portsmouth with a close relationship to her university art lecturer father, Jacob, who taught on the foundation art course.

She was his only daughter, although she had two half siblings on her mum’s side who also lived with her growing up.

In his spare time, her dad made furniture in a home workshop, never selling his pieces but keeping them for personal use.

He didn’t get Betzy involved when she was younger, but she feels like she inherited his practical qualities.

“I think it was quite a private thing for him,” Betzy explained.

At school, Betzy took a careers test that suggested she should become a bricklayer.

“I just had this image of a big, sweaty male, and I was like, ‘how can I fit into that environment?’” she said.

“Obviously, I was all wrong, but I was never guided into potentially what I could do.”

After leaving school, Betzy spent her twenties working in bars and restaurants.

She took a couple of years out to raise her daughter after her birth in July 2016 before deciding she wanted a more settled, nine to five role.

The decision to retrain was prompted in part by inheriting a box of woodworking tools from her father, who died of pancreatic cancer in May 2015, aged just 61.

Inheriting her father’s toolbox after his death was bittersweet for Betzy.

She did not want to “sell them or just let them rust away for the rest of their days”, and felt driven to learn how to use them.

“It’s frustrating because he’ll never know what I’m doing, but I do sort of get this sense of warmth when I’m using his tools… they’ve got his little quirks to them,” she said.

Starting the joinery course at the International Boat Building Training College in Portsmouth in September 2019, Betzy was “relieved” to find two other women among the group of 10 students.

Her classmates were a mix of career changers, school leavers, retirees and ex-military personnel.

“It was a bit more about me than my family, and I was doing it for myself, which was really quite fulfilling,” Betzy said.

After finishing the course, Betzy’s husband, James, 40, a Royal Navy diver, encouraged her to apply for her current role working on HMS Victory: The Big Repair despite her doubts about her capabilities.

“As women we sort of think, well, we can’t do all 10 of these boxes (on the job description), so we’re not good enough,” she explained.

“Whereas I think a lot of males would probably see five of them and be like, ‘let’s go for the job’.”

About a quarter of the HMS Victory shipwright team is female, and Betzy does not feel in the minority.

The work is physically demanding, but Betzy uses cranes and forklifts for the heaviest tasks and is “not afraid to ask for help” when needed.

Betzy has always been active – running and going to the gym – but finds herself doing this less nowadays due to the physical nature of her role.

Most days involve machining, laminating and installing futtocks – with some weighing up to 300kg.

Tasks are completed using both modern power tools and traditional hand tools, and Betzy enjoys the variety and the opportunity to use her dad’s chisels and planes alongside new equipment.

One of the most satisfying elements of Betzy’s work is fitting a futtock she has been working on for weeks, knowing it could remain in place for the next century.

Her team recently celebrated installing their 100th futtock by stamping their names on it, a mark that will potentially be uncovered by future restorers.

Betzy also finds satisfaction working alongside schools to show students the possibilities in the trade.

During a recent visit from a group of Year 9 pupils, Betzy and other female colleagues demonstrated techniques like sawing, carving and signwriting.

The female pupils also toured HMS Victory to see the restoration in action.

“They didn’t realise this sort of job existed, let alone that potentially they could do that job as a female,” Betzy said.

Charlotta has also visited the site to see her mother’s work, but she was more interested in exploring inside the ship than the restoration work itself, which is exactly how Betzy wants it to be.

“She just thinks it’s normal what I do,” she said. “If she just grows up thinking, ‘my mum’s a boat builder and that’s a normal thing’, then that’s what I want to achieve.”

Betzy hopes to see the HMS Victory project through to completion – the aim is to restore the ship to how she looked on the morning of the Battle of Trafalgar.

With heritage boatbuilding on the red list of endangered crafts, Betzy is also interested in mentoring more young people in the future and believes practical skills are valuable life lessons.

“Maybe one day a young girl will see me at work and think, ‘I could do that too’,” she said.