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George Willes
Admiral Sir George Ommanney Willes (19 June 1823 – 18 February 1901) was a Royal Navy officer who went on to be Commander-in-Chief, Portsmouth. Early life Born at Hythe, Hampshire in 1823, Willes was the son of Captain George Willes, RN, by his wife Anne Lacon, daughter of Sir Edmund Lacon, Baronet. He was educated at the Royal Naval College, Portsmouth, and joined the Royal Navy in 1838. Naval career Willes received his commission as Mate in 1842, and as Lieutenant in 1844, his early career being uneventful until the outbreak of the Crimean War, when he took part in the bombardment of Odessa and of at Sevastopol in 1854. In April that year he was promoted Commander, and in May 1856 Captain. He was given command of the frigate HMS ''Chesapeake'' in 1859, and of HMS ''Impérieuse'' in 1861. In both cases as Flag Captain to the Commander-in-Chief, East Indies. In this capacity he took part in the Battle of the Taku Forts during the Second Opium War. In 1864 he was made ...
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United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, and many smaller islands within the British Isles. Northern Ireland shares a land border with the Republic of Ireland; otherwise, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel, the Celtic Sea and the Irish Sea. The total area of the United Kingdom is , with an estimated 2020 population of more than 67 million people. The United Kingdom has evolved from a series of annexations, unions and separations of constituent countries over several hundred years. The Treaty of Union between the Kingdom of England (which included Wales, annexed in 1542) and the Kingdom of Scotland in 170 ...
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Bombardment Of Odessa
The Bombardment of Odessa was an action during the Crimean War in which a joint Anglo-French squadron of warships attacked the Russian port of Odessa. Background and formation On 6 April 1854, soon after the declaration of war by Britain and France on Russia, the British steam frigate , under the command of Captain William Loring, sailed to Odessa and sent a boat into the port under a flag of truce to collect the British Consul there. When leaving the port the boat was fired upon by the Russians. The British naval commander Vice-Admiral James Dundas demanded an explanation from Lieutenant-General Dmitri Osten-Sacken, the military governor of Odessa, for this breach of the laws of war. His reply was considered unacceptable, so a squadron was quickly selected to mount a punitive expedition. An article by Karl Marx, printed in the ''New York Daily Tribune'' of 16 May 1854, reported that the Russians had claimed that the ''Furious'' was actually carrying out a covert reconnaiss ...
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William Dowell (Royal Navy Officer)
Admiral Sir William Montagu Dowell (2 August 1825 – 27 December 1912) was a Royal Navy officer who served as Commander-in-Chief, Devonport. Naval career Dowell joined the Royal Navy in 1839. He served in the Black Sea during the Crimean War. He was given command of HMS ''Hornet'' and HMS ''Barrosa'' and, in the latter ship, took part in the Bombardment of Shimonoseki in 1863. Later he commanded HMS ''Euryalus'', HMS ''Topaze'' and then HMS ''Leander''. He was made Commander-in-Chief, Cape of Good Hope and West Coast of Africa Station in 1867 before taking command of HMS ''Hercules'' in 1871. He became Second-in-Command of the Channel Squadron in 1877, Senior Officer, Coast of Ireland Station in 1878, Senior Officer in Command of the Channel Squadron in 1882, Commander-in-Chief, China Station in 1884 and Commander-in-Chief, Devonport in 1888. He retired in 1890. In retirement he became President of the Royal British Female Orphan Asylum in Plymouth Plymouth () ...
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Robert Coote (Royal Navy Officer)
Admiral Robert Coote (1 June 1820 – 17 March 1898) was a Royal Navy officer who went on to be Commander-in-Chief, China Station. Background Coote was a younger son of Sir Charles Coote, 9th Baronet, by Caroline Whaley, daughter of John Whaley, of Whaley Abbey, County Wicklow. Naval career Educated at Eton College, Coote joined the Royal Navy in 1833 and served on the coast of Syria in 1840. He was made commander of the sloop HMS ''Volcano'' in 1851 while serving in the West Africa Squadron. Promoted to captain in 1854, he commanded HMS ''Victory'' from 1860, HMS ''Gibraltar'' from 1864 and HMS ''Arethusa'' from 1867. He became Commander-in-Chief, Queenstown in 1874 and Commander-in-Chief, China in 1878. He retired in 1885. He is buried in Brookwood Cemetery in Woking Cemetery. There is a memorial to him in St Catherine's Church in Tullamore in County Offaly. Family Coote married Lucy Parry, daughter of the Arctic explorer Admiral Sir William Parry, in 1854. They had ...
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John Murray (publishing House)
John Murray is a British publisher, known for the authors it has published in its long history including, Jane Austen, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Lord Byron, Charles Lyell, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Herman Melville, Edward Whymper, Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo, and Charles Darwin. Since 2004, it has been owned by conglomerate Lagardère under the Hachette UK brand. Business publisher Nicholas Brealey became an imprint of John Murray in 2015. History The business was founded in London in 1768 by John Murray (1737–1793), an Edinburgh-born Royal Marines officer, who built up a list of authors including Isaac D'Israeli and published the ''English Review''. John Murray the elder was one of the founding sponsors of the London evening newspaper ''The Star'' in 1788. He was succeeded by his son John Murray II, who made the publishing house important and influential. He was a friend of many leading writers of the day and launched the ''Quarterly Review'' in 1809. He was the pub ...
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Edmund Willes
Edmund Henry Lacon Willes (7 July 1832 – 9 September 1896) was an English first-class cricketer who played in the 1850s and 1860s as a right-handed batsman who bowled right-arm roundarm fast. He became a Church of England cleric.Carlaw D (2020) ''Kent County Cricketers A to Z. Part One: 1806–1914'' (revised edition), pp. 576–577.Available onlineat the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians. Retrieved 8 August 2022.) Willes was educated at Winchester College, where he represented the college cricket team, and at Oxford University, where he was an exhibitioner at Queen's College from 1850 to 1853, a scholar from 1854 to 1856 and a fellow from 1856 to 1865. Cricket career Willes played cricket for a variety of amateur teams over a period of 17 years. He made his first-class debut for a Hampshire team against an All-England Eleven in 1850. Between 1851 and 1854, he played for Oxford University, appearing three times in the University Match against Cambridge. H ...
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Sir Mark Wood, 1st Baronet
Sir Mark Wood, 1st Baronet (16 March 1750 – 6 February 1829) was a British army officer and engineer. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) for Milborne Port, Gatton and Newark. He received a baronetcy on 3 October 1808. Mark Wood was the eldest son of Alexander Wood of Perth, descended from the family of the Woods of Largo, to the estates of which Alexander succeeded on the death of his cousin, John Wood, sometime governor of the Isle of Man. Mark became a cadet of the East India Company's army in 1770, and went to India with his brother George (afterwards a major-general of the Indian army and K.C.B.), who died in 1824. Another brother was Sir James Athol Wood. He received his first commission on 7 July 1772, in the Bengal engineers, and rose to be colonel 26 February 1795. After a distinguished career in India, culminating in his appointment as surveyor-general in 1787 and chief engineer of Bengal in 1790, he returned to England on account of ill-health in 1793, and purchased ...
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HMNB Devonport
His Majesty's Naval Base, Devonport (HMNB Devonport) is one of three operating bases in the United Kingdom for the Royal Navy (the others being HMNB Clyde and HMNB Portsmouth) and is the sole nuclear repair and refuelling facility for the Royal Navy. The largest naval base in Western Europe, HMNB Devonport is located in Devonport, in the west of the city of Plymouth, England. The base began as Royal Navy Dockyard in the late 17th century, but shipbuilding ceased at Devonport in the early 1970s, although ship maintenance work has continued. The now privatised maintenance facilities are operated by Babcock International Group, who took over the previous owner Devonport Management Limited (DML) in 2007. DML had been running the Dockyard since privatisation in 1987. From 1934 until the early 21st century the naval barracks on the site was named HMS ''Drake'' (it had previously been known as HMS ''Vivid'' after the base ship of the same name). The name HMS ''Drake'' and its c ...
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Ironclad Warship
An ironclad is a steam-propelled warship protected by iron or steel armor plates, constructed from 1859 to the early 1890s. The ironclad was developed as a result of the vulnerability of wooden warships to explosive or incendiary shells. The first ironclad battleship, , was launched by the French Navy in November 1859 - narrowly pre-empting the British Royal Navy. They were first used in warfare in 1862 during the American Civil War, when ironclads operated against wooden ships and, in a historic confrontation, against each other at the Battle of Hampton Roads in Virginia. Their performance demonstrated that the ironclad had replaced the unarmored ship of the line as the most powerful warship afloat. Ironclad gunboats became very successful in the American Civil War. Ironclads were designed for several uses, including as high seas battleships, long-range cruisers, and coastal defense ships. Rapid development of warship design in the late 19th century transformed the ir ...
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Battle Of Taku Forts (1859)
The Second Battle of Taku Forts () was a failed Anglo-French attempt to seize the Taku Forts along the Hai River in Tianjin, China, in June 1859 during the Second Opium War. A chartered American steamship arrived on scene and assisted the French and British in their attempted suppression of the forts. Background After the First Battle of Taku Forts in 1858, the Xianfeng Emperor appointed the Mongol general Sengge Rinchen to take charge of coastal defense. Sengge Rinchen hailed from a rich lineage - the 26th generation descendant of Qasar, a brother of Genghis Khan. He took to this task with ardor, repairing and improving the coastal defenses in preparation for the British arrival. A second, stronger boom was constructed across the river to further restrict the movement of British ships. This second boom was made of full-sized tree trunks, connected with heavy chains. Two rows of ditches were dug in front of the forts' walls, filled with water and mud, and an abatis of iron spike ...
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East Indies Station
The East Indies Station was a formation and command of the British Royal Navy. Created in 1744 by the Admiralty, it was under the command of the Commander-in-Chief, East Indies. Even in official documents, the term ''East Indies Station'' was often used. In 1941 the ships of the China Squadron and East Indies Squadron were merged to form the Eastern Fleet under the control of the Commander-in-Chief, Eastern Fleet. The China Station then ceased as a separate command. The East Indies Station was disbanded in 1958. It encompassed Royal Navy Dockyards and bases in East Africa, Middle East, India and Ceylon, and other ships not attached to other fleets. For many years under rear admirals, from the 1930s the Commander-in-Chief was often an Admiral or a Vice-Admiral. History The East Indies Station was established as a Royal Navy command in 1744. From 1831 to 1865, the East Indies and the China Station were a single command known as the East Indies and China Station. The East Ind ...
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Frigate
A frigate () is a type of warship. In different eras, the roles and capabilities of ships classified as frigates have varied somewhat. The name frigate in the 17th to early 18th centuries was given to any full-rigged ship built for speed and maneuverability, intended to be used in scouting, escort and patrol roles. The term was applied loosely to ships varying greatly in design. In the second quarter of the 18th century, the 'true frigate' was developed in France. This type of vessel was characterised by possessing only one armed deck, with an unarmed deck below it used for berthing the crew. Late in the 19th century (British and French prototypes were constructed in 1858), armoured frigates were developed as powerful ironclad warships, the term frigate was used because of their single gun deck. Later developments in ironclad ships rendered the frigate designation obsolete and the term fell out of favour. During the Second World War the name 'frigate' was reintroduced to des ...
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