X-Nico

44 unusual facts about Royal Navy


Anti-discrimination law

The reason given varies; for example, the British Royal Navy cite the reason for not allowing women to serve aboard submarines as medical and related to the safety of an unborn fetus, rather than that of combat effectiveness.

Army Navy Match

Although a match was played between the officers of the British Army and the officers of the Royal Navy at Kennington Oval, London on 13 February 1878, it was not until 1909 that the Army Navy Match became an annual fixture, when it was jointly administered by the newly formed Royal Navy Rugby Union (RNRU - 1906) and the Army Rugby Union (ARU - 1906).

Battenberg Cup

In 1905, Prince Louis of Battenberg, commanding the five ships of the Royal Navy's 2nd Cruiser Squadron, visited the United States, making port visits in New York City, Annapolis and Washington, D.C. Shortly after his return to England, Battenberg sent the cup to Rear Admiral Robley Evans who at the time commanded the US North Atlantic Fleet.

Battle of Fort Charlotte

He learned in April that additional reinforcements, including British Royal Navy vessels, had arrived at Pensacola.

Bowman Flag

It commemorates (by the motto England expects that every man will do his duty) the Royal Navy’s victory at the Battle of Trafalgar (21 October 1805) a landmark event for Britain’s Australasian colonies.

Burial of Drowned Persons Acts 1808 and 1886

The passage of the 1808 act was one of the consequences of the wreck of the Royal Navy frigate HMS Anson in Mount's Bay in 1807.

Cellular manufacturing

By 1808, using machinery designed by Marc Isambard Brunel and constructed by Henry Maudslay, the Block Mills were producing 130,000 blocks (pulleys) for the Royal Navy per year in single unit lots, with 10 men operating 42 machines arranged in three production flow lines.

E-class submarine

The E class of 58 submarines of the Royal Navy, built between 1912 and 1916 that served in World War I

Ethel Gee

She thus handled top secret documents on Britain's underwater warfare work and HMS Dreadnought, the Royal Navy's first nuclear submarine.

Finsthwaite Heights

Wainwright's walk starts from Newby Bridge, climbs through woodland passing a tower which has a 1799 inscription commemorating the Royal Navy, passes through the village, and climbs to the man-made tarns of Low Dam and High Dam.

Gardner gun

At this point, the British Royal Navy, which had successfully deployed the Gatling gun, became interested in the weapon, and Gardner was invited to England to exhibit his invention.

Greene Inlet

The name "Deep Inlet" was probably given by Lieutenant Commander J.M. Chaplin, Royal Navy, of the Discovery, during his survey of the Undine Harbour area in 1926 but it is not used locally.

Gunboat

With the introduction of steam power in the early 19th century, the Royal Navy and other navies built considerable numbers of small vessels propelled by side paddles and later by screws.

Habeas Corpus Parliament

I must needs put you in mind how necessary it will be to have a good Strength at Sea, next Summer, since our Neighbours are making naval Preparations...

Harry Benjamin

Following an ill-fated professional visit to the United States, the liner in which Benjamin was returning to Germany was caught mid-Atlantic both by the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, and the Royal Navy.

High-pressure nervous syndrome

"Helium tremors" were first widely described in 1965 by Royal Navy physiologist Peter B. Bennett, who also founded the Divers Alert Network.

History of the Halifax Regional Municipality

At the same time, the towns people and especially seafarers were constantly on-guard of the press gangs of the Royal Navy.

He was instrumental in shaping that port's military defences for protecting the important Royal Navy base, as well as influencing the city's and colony's socio-political and economic institutions.

HMS Usk

At least three ships of the Royal Navy have borne the name HMS Usk.

Hornblower in the West Indies

Hornblower in the West Indies, or alternately Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies is one of the novels in the series CS Forester wrote about fictional Royal Navy officer Horatio Hornblower.

Howard Townsend

His father was an industrialist, having carried on the business of the Stirling Iron Works which forged the Hudson River Chain that prevented the British Royal Navy from sailing up the Hudson River during the American Revolution.

John Bean

Initially he was a trainee navigator in RAF Volunteer Reserve and later as a sailor in the Royal Navy.

Julius Carlebach

Carlebach went to school in London, and was a soldier in the Royal Navy for ten years and managed an orphanage for Jewish children in Norwood.

Leander class

Leander class may refer to one of three ship classes operated by the Royal Navy (and in two instances, other naval forces);

Little Holm, Yell Sound

In 1983, the Royal Navy cleared ordnance from the area, and their bomb disposal team discovered an unrecorded shipwreck nearby.

Machias Memorial High School

The school yearbook, the Margaretta, is named after HMS Margaretta, a British schooner captured on the Machias River during the American Revolutionary War.

Marlborough, New York

A land grant (patent) of this territory was made to Captain John Evans of the Royal Navy in 1694, and one of his first settlers arrived in 1697.

Napier, Ontario

One early settler was Captain Christopher Beer who previously had spent 14 years in the Royal Navy.

Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay

A state-of-the-art Magnetic Silencing Facility (MSF) provides degaussing services, including ranging and the removal of permanent magnetism for submarines of the U.S. Navy and the British Royal Navy, as well as for steel-hulled surface warships.

Operation Hametz

Royal Navy destroyers cruised up and down the Palestinian coast, and Royal Air Force warplanes overflew southern Tel Aviv and Jaffa.

P-class cruiser

He signed the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, which allowed Germany to build up its navy to 35 percent of the strength of the British Royal Navy and effectively repudiated the restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles on the German fleet.

Patterson Park

The American defenses were far stronger than anticipated, and U.S. defenders at Fort McHenry successfully stopped British naval forces from advancing close enough to lend artillery support, and British attempts to flank the defense were countered.

Pegasus class

five British Royal Navy ships carrying a single fighter launched by catapult, known as Fighter catapult ships

Penelakut Island

British sailors surveying the area in 1851 cruised into a tiny group of five unnamed islands in the Strait of Georgia, naming the two largest Kuper and Thetis, after their Captain Augustus Leopold Kuper R.N. (1809–1885) and his frigate, HMS Thetis, a 36-gun Royal Navy frigate on the Pacific Station between 1851 and 1853.

Ray Cokes

His father was an officer in the Royal Navy, who was stationed at various navy bases around the world.

Requiem for a Wren

He is appalled to learn that the woman was, in fact, Janet Prentice - a former Royal Navy Wren and the former girlfriend of his dead brother Bill, and someone for whom Alan had spent considerable time searching immediately after the war.

Robert Patten Adams

Adams was married twice; his first wife, who died in 1867, being Harriett Matilda, daughter of the Captain George King, R.N. He then married Kate, daughter of the George Francis Huston, JP, of New Norfolk, Tasmania.

Royal Navy Rugby Union

The Royal Navy Rugby Union (RNRU) was formed in 1906 to administer the playing of rugby union in the Royal Navy.

Sam Malcolmson

Malcolmson served in the Royal Navy and in 1969, whilst stationed at R.N.A.S. Culdrose in Cornwall, he played 14 games (5 goals) for Falmouth Town A.F.C..

Society of United Irishmen

In October, Wolfe Tone himself was captured when a supporting French fleet of 3,000 troops was intercepted and defeated by the Royal Navy near Lough Swilly.

Surveying in early America

When George reached school age, instead of a career in the Royal Navy, George went to school to study surveying and geometry.

Ubisoft Red Storm

Tom Clancy and Doug Littlejohns, a British Royal Navy submarine captain, founded Red Storm Entertainment in 1996.

Win, Lose or Die

M receives word that a terrorist organisation known as BAST (Brotherhood of Anarchy and Secret Terrorism) is planning to infiltrate and destroy a top-secret British Royal Navy aircraft carrier-based summit scheduled a year hence between American President George H. W. Bush, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Russian Premier Mikhail Gorbachev.

World of Warships

These ships can be either real ships or prototypes from a variety of forces such as the Imperial Japanese Navy, Kriegsmarine, US Navy, Royal Navy, and the Soviet Navy.


Africa Star

The sand of the desert is represented by pale buff, the Royal Navy (and Merchant Navy), British Army, and Royal Air Force are represented by stripes of dark blue, red, and light blue respectively.

Allied naval bombardments of Japan during World War II

During the last weeks of World War II, warships of the United States Navy, Britain's Royal Navy, and the Royal New Zealand Navy bombarded several cities and industrial facilities in Japan.

Aubrey–Maturin series

The series focuses on two main characters, naval officer Jack Aubrey and physician, naturalist, and spy Stephen Maturin, and the ongoing plot is structured around Aubrey's ascent from Lieutenant to Rear Admiral in the Royal Navy during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.

Beiyang Fleet

These cruisers were fast (25 knots) and heavily armed, but were not adopted by the Royal Navy because the Admiralty considered them to be "weak in structure".

Carrier Air Wing Three

CVW-3 squadrons embarked with the Royal Navy's 892 Naval Air Squadron for two weeks, and flew in response to a number of events in the Mediterranean including; hijackings, internal fighting in Jordan, and the death of Egyptian President Nasser.

Christmas on a Rational Planet

It also contains the first casual reference to the Faction Paradox, which become an important element in the BBC books Eighth Doctor Adventures and subsequent spin-off series, and an explicit explanation that the mark carried by the Third Doctor during his exile on Earth was a branding used to distinguish criminals by the Time Lords (in reality, this mark was a tattoo of a cobra that Jon Pertwee picked up while serving in the Royal Navy).

CSS Tallahassee

The iron Confederate cruiser Tallahassee was named after the Confederate state capital of Tallahassee in Florida and was built on the River Thames by J & W Dudgeon of Cubitt Town, London for London, Chatham & Dover Rly. Co. to the design of Capt. T. E. Symonds, Royal Navy, ostensibly for the Chinese opium trade.

Dawsonne Drake

During his administration in the Philippines, his term was scandalized by bitter quarrels with various military officers (General William Draper; Admiral Cornish; Major Felt; Captain Thomas Backhouse (command British forces in Manila); and Captain William Brereton, RN).

Defence College of Communications and Information Systems

The College consists of a headquarters based at Blandford Camp in Dorset, the Royal Navy CIS Training Unit at HMS Collingwood, Fareham, Hampshire, The Royal School of Signals at Blandford Camp and the Royal Air Force Number 1 Radio School, collocated with the headquarters of the Defence College of Aeronautical Engineering at Cosford, of which the Aerial Erector School at RAF Digby is a part.

Del Rio, Tennessee

According to family lore, Stokely was impressed into the British navy, but escaped and fought under American captain John Paul Jones.

Dugald Campbell Patterson

In 1915, during World War I, Patterson accepted a commission by the British government to travel overseas to supervise a group of Canadians in the construction of submarines for the Royal Navy on the River Clyde near Glasgow, Scotland.

Dumaresq

The Dumaresq is a mechanical calculating device invented around 1902 by Lieutenant John Dumaresq of the Royal Navy.

Edensor

The churchyard also contains three Commonwealth service war graves of World War I: a British soldier, a British sailor and a Canadian Army officer.

First Battle of Algeciras

As a result, the British Royal Navy became dominant in the Mediterranean Sea and imposed blockades on French and Spanish ports in the region, including the important naval bases of Toulon and Cadiz.

First National Government of New Zealand

At the start of the war it had been assumed that the Royal Navy would protect New Zealand, but the Fall of Singapore showed this to be a false assumption.

George Walters

The warrant announced the creation of a single decoration available to the Army and Royal Navy, which was intended to reward 'individual instances of merit and valour' and which 'we are desirous should be highly prized and eagerly sought after'.

Hinstock

From 1941 to 1947 there was a co-located Royal Air Force and Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm training station called HMS Godwit, which specialised in instrument and blind landing technologies.

HMNB Devonport

Her Majesty's Naval Base (HMNB) Devonport (formerly HMS Drake), is one of three operating bases in the United Kingdom for the Royal Navy (the others being HMNB Clyde and HMNB Portsmouth).

HMS Hector

Eleven ships of the British Royal Navy have borne the name HMS Hector, named after the Trojan hero Hector in the Iliad.

HMS Niger

Seven ships of the Royal Navy have borne the name HMS Niger after the Niger River, whilst another was planned.

HMS Norfolk

Five ships of the Royal Navy have been named HMS Norfolk, after the Duke of Norfolk or the county of Norfolk.

HMS Queen Charlotte

Four ships of the Royal Navy have been named HMS Queen Charlotte after Charlotte, queen consort of King George III of the United Kingdom.

Irene Incident

In an attempt to surprise the pirates of Bias Bay, about sixty miles from Hong Kong, Royal Navy submarines attacked the merchant ship SS Irene, of the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company, which had been taken over by the pirates on the night of October 19.

John Barrington, 1st Viscount Barrington

William, the eldest, became Chancellor of the Exchequer; John was a Major-General in the British Army; Daines was a lawyer, antiquarian and naturalist; Samuel was a Rear-Admiral in the Royal Navy; and Shute became Bishop of Salisbury and Bishop of Durham.

John Quilliam

Captain John Quilliam RN (born Marown, Isle of Man 29 September 1771 - died Michael, Isle of Man 10 October 1829) was a Royal Navy officer and the First Lieutenant on HMS Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar.

Old Lyme, Connecticut

John McCurdy (b.1724), whose home was the resting place for George Washington on April 10, 1776 while traveling to New York City to take on the British Army and Navy (source: Papers of George Washington, Connecticut State Library); grandfather of Connecticut Supreme Court judge Charles McCurdy

PULHHEEMS

PULHHEEMS is tri-service, which is to say that it is used by the British Army, the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force.

Ross Donnelly

Admiral Sir Ross Donnelly, KCB, (c. 1761 – 30 September 1840) was a Royal Navy officer of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who is best known for his service during the American Revolutionary War and the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, particularly as a lieutenant on HMS Montagu at the Glorious First of June after the death of Captain James Montagu.

Royal Navy Recognised Sea Scouts

There are 101 Sea Scout Groups in the United Kingdom and one group in Gibraltar who are affiliated to the Royal Navy in order to foster a close relationship between the Royal Navy and young people in the Scout Association by making naval facilities and equipment accessible.

Royston Tickner

He served in the Royal Navy in World War II and from 1947 took a break from the theatre to work as a lighthouse keeper, miner, fireman and publican, before returning to acting in 1958.

Sharpe's Devil

Lord Cochrane, a former Royal Navy officer now in service to the Chilean rebels under Bernardo O'Higgins, ambushes the Espiritu Santo and, with the assistance of Sharpe and Harper, capture it, taking Captain Ardiles prisoner.

South Walls

South Walls has substantial remains from the WWII period, when Scapa Flow was used as a Royal Navy base.

Swords, Dublin

In attendance at this Presidential ceremony was Admiral Sir Jock Slater, R.N., a former British First Sea Lord then serving as Chairman of the Executive Committee of the R.N.L.I..

Tony Bastable

Bastable later moved into independent production, and he produced training and promotional films for companies such as the Ford Motor Company, the National Bus Company, the Royal Navy, the Department of Transport and the Institute of Advanced Motorists.

Viscount Bridport

Viscount Bridport was Lieutenant-Commander in the Royal Navy and also held minor political office from 1939 to 1940 under Neville Chamberlain.

Whiggism

The opposing Tory position was held by the other great families, the Church of England, and most of the landed gentry and officers of the army and the navy.

William Lashly

At the time he joined Scott's Discovery expedition in 1901, he was a 33-year-old leading stoker in the Royal Navy, serving on HMS Duke of Wellington.

William Pullen

Pullen was born in Devonport, Devon, the son of Royal Navy Lieutenant William Pullen and Amelia Mary Haswell.