History of the Royal Navy

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The British Royal Navy does not have a well-defined moment of formation; it started out as a motley assortment of "King's ships" during the Middle Ages, assembled only as needed and then dispersed, began to take shape as a standing navy during the 16th century, and became a regular establishment during the tumults of the 17th century. The Navy grew considerably during the global struggle with France that started in 1690 and culminated in the Napoleonic Wars, a time when the practice of fighting under sail was developed to its highest point. The ensuing century of general peace saw considerable technological development, with sail yielding to steam and cannon supplanted by large shell-firing guns, and ending with the race to construct bigger and better battleships. That race, however, was ultimately a dead end, as aircraft carriers and submarines came to the fore, and after the successes of World War II, the Royal Navy yielded its formerly-preeminent place to the United States Navy, but today the Royal Navy is considered to be the second largest and most powerful naval force in the world.

King's ships, to 1500

Saxon

Alfred the Great has traditionally been recognized as the "founder of the navy"; in 897 he had a number of ships built, of at least 60 oars each, to counter Danish Viking raids along the south coast of England. In this role they gained a significant victory at the battle of Stourmouth, Kent (now silted up in Romney Marsh and inland).

It soon fell into disrepair, however, to be revived by King Athelstan and, at the time of his victory at the Battle of Brunanburh in 937, the English navy had a strength of approximately 400 ships.

Although there is evidence of subsequent attempts to fund a national naval force, there was no opposition to the landings of Sweyn Forkbeard from 1003 on, nor to the takeover by Cnut in 1016. Harold Godwinson did have some ships cruising off the Isle of Wight in the summer of 1066, but they ended their vigil in early September, three weeks before the invasion.

Norman and Medieval, to 1485

The Norman kings had a regular need for cross-Channel transport and started a naval force in 1155, with the Cinque Ports required to provide a total of 57 ships crewed by 21 sailors apiece. However, with the loss of Normandy by King John (who even so had a fleet of 500 sail in an attempt to regain it), this had to become a force capable of preventing invasion (eg the 1215-1217 French invasion of England) and protecting traffic to and from Gascony. In the first years of the 13th century William de Wrotham appears in the records as the clerk of a force of galleys to be used against Philip Augustus of France. The fleet also started to have an offensive capabaility, as in 1213 when ships commanded by the Earl of Salisbury, raided Damme in Flanders, where they burned many ships of the French fleet.

An infrastructure was also developing - by 1212 a base existed at Portsmouth, supporting at least ten ships, including a flagship Dieulabeni and a horse transport Portjoy.

Later in the 13th century ships begin to be mentioned regularly as support for various campaigns, most notably in Luke de Tony's capture of Anglesey in 1282. Edward II of England attempted to blockade Scotland, but ineffectively. Naval expenses were considerable, with 20 120-oared galleys being ordered in 1294.

The Hundred Years' War included a number of cross-Channel raids both ways, mostly unopposed due to lack of effective communications. The Battle of Sluys in 1340 was a significant English victory, with Edward III of England's 160 ships (mostly hired merchant vessels) assaulting a French force in the Zwyn estuary and capturing 180 French ships in hand-to-hand combat. Les Espagnols sur Mer, fought in the Channel off Winchelsea in 1350, is possibly the first English sea battle; the English captured 14 Spanish ships.

The 14th century also saw the creation of the post of Clerk of the King's Ships, who appears from 1344 on as in charge of some 34 royal vessels. In the mid-fourteenth century Edward III's navy overall had some 700 ships.

English fortunes declined in the 1370s, with merchants objecting to the continual borrowing of their ships and the taxation to man the king's ships, and by the end of the reign of Richard II of England only four were left, and by 1409 only two. Henry V of England revived the navy, building a number of balingers and "great ships", including the 1,400-ton Grace Dieu (which still exists, buried in the Hamble estuary), and won victories in the Channel, reaching a high point in 1417. But this was short-lived, and significant new construction did not occur until the 1480s, by which time ships mounted guns regularly; the Regent of 1487 had 225 serpentines, an early type of cannon.

The beginnings of an organised navy, 1500–1642

1500 to 1601

Main article: The Tudors and the Royal Navy

1601-1642

After 1601 the efficiency of the Navy declined gradually, while corruption grew until brought under control in an inquiry of 1618. Notable construction in the early 17th century included the 1,200-ton Prince Royal, the first three-decker, and Sovereign of the Seas in 1637, designed by Phineas Pett. Operations under James I did not go well, with expeditions against Algerian pirates, Cadiz, and La Rochelle being expensive failures.

The formation of a fighting force, 1642–1689

At the beginning of the English Civil War, the navy, then consisting of 35 vessels, sided with Parliament. The execution of Charles I forced the rapid expansion of the navy, by multiplying England's actual and potential enemies, and many vessels were constructed from the 1650s on.

Operations of the time were dominated by the first three Anglo-Dutch Wars, which stretched from 1652 to 1674. Triggered by seemingly trivial incidents, but motivated by economic competition, they were notable as purely naval wars fought in the English Channel and the North Sea. Strategically, England profited little by the wars, but the experience of large-scale battle was instructive to the Navy; the Articles of War regularizing the conduct of officers and seaman, and the Fighting Instructions establishing the line of battle both date from this period.

At the start of the Restoration Parliament listed forty ships of the Royal Navy, (not of the Summer's Guard) with a complement of 3,695 sailors[1]. The administration of the navy was greatly improved by Sir William Coventry and Samuel Pepys, both of whom began their service in 1660 with the Restoration. While it was Pepys' diary that made him the most famous of all naval bureaucrats, his nearly thirty years of administration were crucial in replacing the ad hoc processes of years past with regular programs of supply, construction, pay, and so forth.

Wars with France, 1690–1815

The Glorious Revolution of 1688 rearranged the political map of Europe, and led to a series of wars with France that lasted well over a century. This was the classic age of sail; while the ships themselves evolved in only minor ways, technique and tactics were honed to a high degree, and the battles of the Napoleonic Wars entailed feats that would have been impossible for the fleets of the 17th century.

The landing of the Glorious Revolution itself was a gigantic effort involving 100 warships and 400 transports carrying 11,000 infantry and 4,000 horses. Louis XIV declared war just days later, and the War of the Grand Alliance was on. England's 1690 defeat at the Battle of Beachy Head led to an improved version of the Fighting Instructions, and subsequent operations against French ports proved more successful, leading to decisive victory at La Hougue in 1692.

Naval operations in the War of the Spanish Succession were at first focused on the acquisition of a Mediterranean base, culminating in an alliance with Portugal and the capture of Gibraltar (1704) and Port Mahon (1708). Even so, freedom of action in the Mediterranean did not decide the war, although it gave Britain an advantage when negotiating the Peace of Utrecht, and made her a recognized world power. The subsequent quarter-century of peace saw a few naval actions, at Cape Passaro in 1718, in the Great Northern War, and in the West Indies (1726).

The War of the Austrian Succession brought a new round of naval operations against France, including a blockade of Toulon, an assault on Cartagena of the Indies. The Navy also defended against invasion by Charles Edward Stuart the "Young Pretender". By the end of the war, the Navy was fully engaged in the worldwide protection of British trade.

The Seven Years' War began somewhat inauspiciously for the Navy, with a French siege of Minorca and the failure of Admiral John Byng to relieve it; he was executed on his own quarterdeck. Voltaire famously wrote that he had been shot "to encourage the others (admirals)". Subsequent operations went more successfully (due more to government support and better strategic thinking, rather than admirals "encouraged" by Byng's example), and the British fleet won several victories. The Treaty of Paris that ended the war left Britain with colonial gains, but isolated strategically.

At the beginning of the American Revolutionary War, the Royal Navy dealt with the fledgling Continental Navy handily, destroying or capturing many of its vessels. However, France soon took the American side, and in 1778 a French fleet sailed for America, where it attempted to land at Rhode Island and nearly engaged with the British fleet before a storm intervened, while back home another fought the British in the First Battle of Ushant. Action shifted to the Caribbean, where there were a number of battles with varying results. The most important operation came in 1781, when in the Battle of the Chesapeake the British failed to lift the French blockade of Lord Cornwallis, and resulting in a British surrender in the Battle of Yorktown. Although combat was over in North America, it continued in the Caribbean (Battle of the Saintes) and India, where the British experienced both successes and failures.

Initially Britain did not involve itself in the French Revolution, but in 1793 France declared war, leading to the Glorious First of June battle in the following year, followed by the capture of French colonies in the Caribbean. Further action came in 1797 and 1798, with the battles of Cape St Vincent and the Nile, which brought Admiral Horatio Nelson to the public's attention. The Peace of Amiens in 1802 proved to be but a brief interruption in the years of warfare, and the Navy was soon blockading Napoleon's France; in the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar, Nelson's ships destroyed the combined Spanish and French fleets, ensuring that the British enjoyed command of the sea. Although there were no more major actions in the Napoleonic Wars, the Navy continued to be busy enforcing blockades and chasing down privateers. During the War of 1812 with the United States, there was no credible challenge to British naval mastery, but the Americans did achieve a number of unexpected victories in single-ship frigate actions, and on the Great Lakes.

Although brief in retrospect, the years of the Napoleonic wars came to be remembered as the apotheosis of "fighting sail", and stories of the Royal Navy at this period have been told and retold regularly since then, most famously in the Horatio Hornblower series of C. S. Forrester, but also by Patrick O'Brian, Dudley Pope and many other writers.

Developments during the Pax Britannica, 1815–1895

The Napoleonic Wars left Great Britain the most powerful naval country in the world, with no meaningful rivals. The country's economic and strategic strength was buttressed by the fleet; localized military action was a staple of the not-entirely-peaceful "Pax Britannica". In addition, the threat of naval force was a significant factor in diplomacy. The navy was not idle, however; the 19th century witnessed a series of transformations that turned the old wooden sailing navy into one of steam and steel.

Operations

The first action of the period was the bombardment of Algiers under Lord Exmouth conducted in 1816. During the Greek War of Independence, the Battle of Navarino was fought in 1827. This was the last major action between fleets of sailing ships. Ottoman involvement continued, with the bombardment of Acre in 1840, and additional Mediterranean crises during the rest of the decade, coming to a head with the Crimean War of the 1850s.

The Crimean War became known as a testing ground for the new technologies of steam and shell. There were two Anglo-French campaigns against Russia. In the Black Sea, success at Sevastopol was paralleled by succesful operations in the Baltic including the bombardments of Bomarsund and Sveaborg.

The Chinese Government placed unilateral restraints on British trade with China. In 1839 a Chinese official impounded opium from India, but the British insisted on the British Empire being allowed to export to China, and instituted a blockade of Canton, beginning the First Anglo-Chinese War (1839-42). There was a Second Anglo-Chinese War from 1856 to 1860. In 1857 the British captured Canton and threatened Beijing, thrown back by the Chinese in 1859 and succeeding the following year.

During the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878) the British sent a fleet of battleships under Geoffrey Phipps Hornby to intimidate Russia from entering Constantinople.

Over the next thirty years, only a bombardment of Alexandria in 1882 brought the fleet into action.

Technology

Steam power was of interest from the beginning of the 19th century, since it neatly solved the difficult and dangerous sailing problems encountered in estuaries and other inshore areas. It was first adopted in the Comet of 1821, and in 1824 Lightning accompanied the expedition to Algiers. Steam vessels appeared in greater numbers through the 1830s and 1840s, all using side-mounted paddlewheels; screw propellers were introduced in the 1830s, and after some reluctance, were adopted in the mid-1840s (the famous tug-of-war between the screw-propelled Rattlesnake and the paddlewheeled Alecto was entertaining, but records show the Admiralty had already decided on and ordered screw ships). Screw battleships and frigates, both conversions and new constructions, were built in large numbers in the 1850s. These ships retained a full capacity for sail as steam engines were not yet efficient enough to permit long ocean voyages under power. Steam power was intended only for use during battle and to allow ships to go to sea at will instead of being held in port by adverse winds.

Iron in ship construction was first used for diagonal-cross-bracing in major warships. The adoption of iron hulls for ocean-going ships had to wait until after Admiralty experiments had solved the problem of an iron-hull's effect on compass deviation. Because iron hulls were much thinner than wooden hulls, they appeared to be more vulnerable to damage when ships ran aground. Although Brunel had adopted iron in the Great Britain, the Admiralty was also concerned about the vulnerability of iron in combat, and experiments with iron in the 1840s seemed to indicate that iron would shatter under impact.

In 1858 France built the first seagoing ironclad, Gloire, and Britain responded with Warrior of 1860, the first of an intensive program of construction that eclipsed French efforts by 1870.

When armoured ships were first introduced, in service guns had very little ability to penetrate their armour. However, starting in 1867, guns started to be introduced into servce capable of penetrating the armour of the first generation iron-clads, albeit at favourable angles and at short range. This had already been anticipated, and armour thicknesses grew; resulting in turn in a gun calibre-race, as larger guns gave better benetration.

In parallel with this there was a debate over how guns should be mounted on ship. Captain Cowper Coles had developed a turret design in the late-1850s as a result of experience in the Crimean War. Initial designs, published in Blackwood's Magazine in 1859 were for a ship with far more than 10 turrets. Consequently a range of coastal-service turret-ships were built in parallel with the sea-going iron-clads. Because of agitation from Captain Coles and his supporters, the issue of turret-ships became deeply political, and resulted in the ordering of Captain an unsatisfactory private design by Lairds and Captain Coles. The rival Admiralty design,Monarch, had a long and successful career. However the need to combine high-free-board at the bow with sails meant that both these ships had very poor end-on fire. The Admiralty's next sea-going turret-ship design Devastation solved these problems by having very large coal bunkers, and put the turrets on a breastwork.

"Being unchallenged and unchallengable, Britain was able to exercise her maritime imperium of the Pax Britanica at remarkably modest expense. The British defence burden, fell progressively to a minimum of 2 percent (of GDP) in 1870. Britain's dominance flowed not so much from the size of her active fleets as from the vast potential strength implicit in the reserve fleet and, behind that, the unrivalled capacity of her industry." At this time, 80% of merchant steamships were built in British shipyards.^[1] At this time, the rate of French construction was low, and construction times were stretched out. For instance, the final of the three French 1872-programme battleships was not completed until October 1886.^[2] Many of these long delayed ships were completed in the second half of the 1880s, and this was misrepresented as the French having more new battleships than the Royal Navy in various publications including the famous 1884 articles in the Liberal magazine Pall Mall Gazette, which alarmed the public just before the General Election, and helped create an increased market for books on naval matters such as the Naval Annual, which was first published in 1887.

This age of naval dominance at low cost (the Dark Ages of the Royal Navy) was ended by the Naval Defence Act of 1889, which authorised ten new battleships, 38 cruisers, and additional vessels. Alfred Thayer Mahan's books and his visit to Europe in the 1890s heightened interest further. When Prime Minister William Gladstone held out against another large programme of naval construction in 1894, he found himself alone, and resigned.

Age of the battleship, 1895–1919

The strategic situation changed rapidly in the mid-1890s; between a Russian-French alliance, an ambitious program of German naval construction, and both the United States and Japan expanding their spheres, Britain found herself isolated and insecure.

Both naval construction and naval strategizing became intense, prompted by the development of torpedoes and submarines, which challenged traditional ideas about the power of battleships. At the same time the Dreadnought committed to the "big gun" concept and caused a shift in thinking around the world, giving Britain the undisputed lead. Another innovative (though ultimately unsuccessful) concept was the battlecruiser, fast and light but still hard-hitting.

At the same time, there was much dispute within the Admiralty about how to operate the modern navy, with Winston Churchill advocating various changes.

In 1911 the Royal Australian Navy and the Royal Canadian Navy came into being.

The accumulated tensions in international relations finally broke out into the hostilities of World War I. From the naval point of view, it was time for the massed fleets to prove themselves, but caution and maneuvering resulted in only a few minor engagements at sea. In the Dardanelles, an effort was made to use naval power to attack shore installations, though with limited success. Finally, in 1916 the British and German fleets in the North Sea connected with each other in the gigantic Battle of Jutland, in which dozens of ships were lost, but whose net results were inconclusive. In the closing phases of the war, U-boats became a factor in what was called the First Battle of the Atlantic, but the RN barely managed to develop effective countermeasures before the war was over.

Interwar and World War II, 1919–1946

The British economy was exhausted by the war, and the Navy was drastically reduced over the next few years by the effects of the Ten-Years Rule, which directed the services to plan on the assumption that another war would not occur for at least ten years; this rule remained in effect until 1933. New activities such as naval aviation received little development during the 1920s. The neglect was partly justified by the arms limitation treaties of the time, notably the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. Naval operations occurred in the 1919 War of Intervention against Bolshevik Russia, where a bold attack sank the cruiser Oleg.

By the mid-1930s, the international situation had again become worrying, and the naval construction program expanded anew. The Navy made a show of force against Mussolini's war in Abyssinia, and operated in China to evacuate British citizens from cities under Japanese attack.

Germany was far outnumbered in surface ship strength in 1939, and relied on U-boats in what came to be known as the Second Battle of the Atlantic, but even so scored some initial victories against British warships. The first large-scale operation was in Norway in 1940, and was followed by several battles in the Mediterranean. Japan's 1941 entry resulted in losses in the Far East, but subsequently British ships fought the Pacific War with the Americans all the way to the shores of Japan.

In 1941 the New Zealand Division became the Royal New Zealand Navy.

The Navy from 1946

Postwar, Navy planners expected to maintain unrealistically-high force levels, and were eventually constrained to be a "medium power", relying on the Americans to be the primary defence against Soviet threats.

Although the late 1940s were generally quiet, the mining of the Saumarez and Volage off Albania in 1946, attempts to control illegal immigration to Palestine in 1947, and the Yangtse Incident of 1949 were reminders that the world was not entirely at peace.

A half-dozen warships, including an aircraft carrier, were routinely on station throughout the Korean War. The Navy also landed troops during the Suez crisis of 1956.

The role of the Navy continued to be debated, and in 1957 the Defence White Paper of Duncan Sandys emphasised reliance on nuclear weapons while leaving the Navy's future uncertain. Lord Mountbatten of Burma nevertheless continued with development, and by 1962 a new Dreadnought became Britain's first nuclear-powered submarine and in 1968 the first ballistic missile submarine Resolution was commissioned, armed with the Polaris missile. Even so, the Labour government announced in 1966 that Britain would not mount major operations without the help of allies, and that the existing carrier force would be maintained into the 1970s; Christopher Mayhew and Sir David Luce resigned in protest, but to no avail. In 1968, further cuts eliminated Britain's "East of Suez" policy.

In the meantime, the fleet was regularly involved in crises; to deter an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1962, in Tanganyika in 1964, and in Indonesia from 1964 to 1966. The Beira Patrol blocking oil supplies to Rhodesia began in 1965. In the Atlantic, the "Cod War" with Iceland, and manoeuvres with Spain over Gibraltar were civilised affairs.

1970s planning envisioned still further cuts to the Navy, with the focus being on "contributing to NATO" rather than operating independently. In 1981, another Minister, Keith Speed, resigned in protest over plans to retain just two carriers and overall manpower at its lowest in over a century. The Falklands War erupted in April 1982, and resulted in a British victory.

The Falklands were a reminder of the hazards of reducing the Navy further, and resulted in a stabilisation of force levels, as well as technical improvements due to lessons learned from the war.

As the Cold War ended, the Royal Navy fought in the Gulf War against Iraq, with Sea Skua missiles sinking a large proportion of the country's navy. However, the end of the Soviet threat brought about a very large reduction in the strength of the Navy. All its diesel submarines were decommissioned and more surface combatants left the fleet.

The 1990s saw blockade operations against Bosnia and involvement in the Kosovo War. The Strategic Defence Review of 1998 and the follow-on Delivering Security in a Changing World White Paper of 2004 promises a somewhat brighter long-term future for the Navy, putting in place the largest naval procurement programme since the end of the Second World War in order to enhance and rebuild the fleet, with a view to bringing the Navy's capabilities into the 21st century, and restructuring the fleet from a North Atlantic-based, large Anti-Submarine force into a true Blue water navy once more. Whilst several smaller vessels were to be withdrawn from service, it was confirmed that two new large aircraft carriers would be constructed.

The Strategic Defence Review assumed that the highest tasking levels placed on the Navy would be either one full scale operation or two concurrent Medium scale operations, based on these assumptions it recommended that the following fleet levels were required. In the past decade the UK government view has moved away from the recommendations of the SDR, this is usually explained by the changing perceived threat following 9/11 and 7/7, fleet levels are now significantly lower than the SDR recommended.

References

• J.R. Hill, ed. The Oxford Illustrated History of the Royal Navy (Oxford University Press, 1995)
• Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (Scribner's, 1976)
• N.A.M. Rodger, The Safeguard of the Sea: A Naval History of Britain, Vol 1: 660-1649, (HarperCollins, 1997), ISBN 0-00-255128-4
• N.A.M. Rodger, The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649-1815, (Allen Lane, 2004), ISBN 0-7139-9411-8

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