The name Victorious has a long and distinguished history in the Royal Navy. The present day HMS Victorious is the fifth to bear the name and continues to uphold those traditions and standards in today's modern Navy.

The first Victorious was launched at Blackwall on the 26th April 1785. A third rate two decker of 74 guns she was one of the class that formed the backbone of the ascendant British Fleet. She saw action in the capture of Cape Town in 1795 before spending the vast majority of her career in the East Indies where she served as the British Flagship. She was condemned in Gibraltar on her journey home in 1803 and subsequently broken up in Lisbon.

The second Victorious was another third rate 74 gun ship, launched at Bucklers Hard in Portsmouth on the 20th October 1808 at a cost of £41, 798. Dispatched to the Baltic Squadron she saw action in the bombardment of Flushing in 1809 before being moved to the Mediterranean. It was here, under the command of Captain Talbot, that she earned her first Battle Honour defeating the far larger French ship Rivoli, killing nearly half of her 810 strong crew. The Victorious then operated for a couple of years in the West Indies before returning to Portsmouth on 1st September 1814 to spend the rest of her career on harbour service before being broken up in 1861.

The third Victorious was a 15,000 ton Majestic Class battleship armed with four 12-inch guns, launched in Chatham in October 1895. She spent many fairly uneventful years in both the Mediterranean and Channel Fleets before taking up a permanent mooring at Scapa Flow as a dockyard repair ship. She was sold for breaking in April 1923.

The fourth Victorious was the third ship in the Illustrious Class of 23,000 ton armoured Fleet carriers. She had a distinguished career throughout the Second World War with operations ranging from the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans to the Far East. In 1941, just one week after she had been commissioned, she was taking part in convoys to Malta and it was Swordfish from her flight deck which dealt the blows that crippled the Bismark. She then went on to spend the winter of 1941-42 covering the Northern Russian convoys. In June 1944 she was re-deployed to join the Eastern Fleet supporting American landings at Padang, Okinawa and Saishimo Gunto during which time she survived concerted kamikaze attacks thanks to her specially armoured flight deck. Relaunched in 1958 after a nearly complete rebuild she continued her career in the Atlantic, Mediterranean and Far East before a mess deck fire ended her service on the 13th March 1968. She was broken up in Faslane in July 1969.