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HMS Canterbury (1915)
HMS ''Canterbury'' was a light cruiser of the Royal Navy that saw service in the First World War and the Russian Civil War. She was part of the ''Cambrian'' group of the C class. Construction ''Canterbury'' was laid down on 28 October 1914, launched on 21 December 1915, and completed in May 1916.Preston, p. 59 Unlike the rest of the ''Cambrian'' subclass, ''Canterbury'' was armed with six torpedo tubes instead of the usual four. Service history World War I Commissioned into the Royal Navy in April or May (sources differ) 1916, ''Canterbury'' was attached to the 3rd Battle Squadron in the Grand Fleet, commanded by Captain Percy M. R. Royds, and participated in the Battle of Jutland on 31 May – 1 June 1916. From 1916 to 1918, she was assigned to the 5th Light Cruiser Squadron, operating as part of Harwich Force in the North Sea to defend the eastern approaches to the Strait of Dover and English Channel. On 5 June 1917, she and the light cruisers and sank the G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Brown & Company
John Brown and Company of Clydebank was a Scottish Naval architecture, marine engineering and shipbuilding firm. It built many notable and world-famous ships including , , , , , and the ''Queen Elizabeth 2 (ship), Queen Elizabeth 2''. At its height, from 1900 to the 1950s, it was one of the most highly regarded, and internationally famous, shipbuilding companies in the world. However thereafter, along with other UK shipbuilders, John Brown's found it increasingly difficult to compete with the emerging shipyards in Eastern Europe and the far East. In 1968 John Brown's merged with other Clydeside shipyards to form the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders consortium, but that collapsed in 1971. The company then withdrew from shipbuilding but its engineering arm remained successful in the manufacture of industrial gas turbines. In 1986 it became a wholly owned subsidiary of Trafalgar House (company), Trafalgar House, which in 1996 was taken over by Kvaerner. The latter closed the Clydebank en ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Keel Laying
Laying the keel or laying down is the formal recognition of the start of a ship's construction. It is often marked with a ceremony attended by dignitaries from the shipbuilding company and the ultimate owners of the ship. Keel laying is one of the four specially celebrated events in the life of a ship; the others are launching, commissioning and decommissioning. In earlier times, the event recognized as the keel laying was the initial placement of the central timber making up the backbone of a vessel, called the keel. As steel ships replaced wooden ones, the central timber gave way to a central steel beam. Modern ships are most commonly built in a series of pre-fabricated, complete hull sections rather than around a single keel. The event recognized as the keel laying is the first joining of modular components, or the lowering of the first module into place in the building dock. It is now often called "keel authentication", and is the ceremonial beginning of the ship's life ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Torpedo Boat
A torpedo boat is a relatively small and fast naval ship designed to carry torpedoes into battle. The first designs were steam-powered craft dedicated to ramming enemy ships with explosive spar torpedoes. Later evolutions launched variants of self-propelled Whitehead torpedoes. These were inshore craft created to counter both the threat of battleships and other slow and heavily armed ships by using speed, agility, and powerful torpedoes, and the overwhelming expense of building a like number of capital ships to counter an enemy's. A swarm of expendable torpedo boats attacking en masse could overwhelm a larger ship's ability to fight them off using its large but cumbersome guns. A fleet of torpedo boats could pose a similar threat to an adversary's capital ships, albeit only in the coastal areas to which their small size and limited fuel load restricted them. The introduction of fast torpedo boats in the late 19th century was a serious concern to the era's naval strategists, i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Channel
The English Channel, "The Sleeve"; nrf, la Maunche, "The Sleeve" (Cotentinais) or ( Jèrriais), (Guernésiais), "The Channel"; br, Mor Breizh, "Sea of Brittany"; cy, Môr Udd, "Lord's Sea"; kw, Mor Bretannek, "British Sea"; nl, Het Kanaal, "The Channel"; german: Ärmelkanal, "Sleeve Channel" ( French: ''la Manche;'' also called the British Channel or simply the Channel) is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates Southern England from northern France. It links to the southern part of the North Sea by the Strait of Dover at its northeastern end. It is the busiest shipping area in the world. It is about long and varies in width from at its widest to at its narrowest in the Strait of Dover."English Channel". ''The Columbia Encyclopedia'', 2004. It is the smallest of the shallow seas around the continental shelf of Europe, covering an area of some . The Channel was a key factor in Britain becoming a naval superpower and has been utilised by Britain as a natural def ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Strait Of Dover
The Strait of Dover or Dover Strait (french: Pas de Calais - ''Strait of Calais''), is the strait at the narrowest part of the English Channel, marking the boundary between the Channel and the North Sea, separating Great Britain from continental Europe. The shortest distance across the strait, at approximately 20 miles (32 kilometres), is from the South Foreland, northeast of Dover in the English county of Kent, to Cap Gris Nez, a cape near to Calais in the French département of Pas-de-Calais. Between these points lies the most popular route for cross-channel swimmers. The entire strait is within the territorial waters of France and the United Kingdom, but a right of transit passage under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea allows vessels of other nations to move freely through the strait. On a clear day, it is possible to see the opposite coastline of England from France and vice versa with the naked eye, with the most famous and obvious sight being the White ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
North Sea
The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. An epeiric sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian Sea in the north. It is more than long and wide, covering . It hosts key north European shipping lanes and is a major fishery. The coast is a popular destination for recreation and tourism in bordering countries, and a rich source of energy resources, including wind and wave power. The North Sea has featured prominently in geopolitical and military affairs, particularly in Northern Europe, from the Middle Ages to the modern era. It was also important globally through the power northern Europeans projected worldwide during much of the Middle Ages and into the modern era. The North Sea was the centre of the Vikings' rise. The Hanseatic League, the Dutch Republic, and the British each sought to gain command of the North Sea and access t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harwich Force
The Harwich Force originally called Harwich Striking Force was a squadron of the Royal Navy, formed during the First World War and based in Harwich. It played a significant role in the war. History After the outbreak of the First World War, a priority for the Royal Navy was to secure the approaches to the English Channel, to prevent elements of the German High Seas Fleet from breaking out into the Atlantic, or from interfering with British maritime trade and convoys to the continent. Most of the major fleet units of the Grand Fleet had dispersed to the navy's anchorage at Scapa Flow or to other North Eastern ports to monitor the northern route from the North Sea into the Atlantic. Consequently, a number of patrol flotillas were organised along the south and east coasts of England, with commands established at several of the major ports in the region. The Dover Patrol was based at Dover, consisting mostly of destroyers, while a number of pre-dreadnoughts and cruisers were based at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Squadron (naval)
A squadron, or naval squadron, is a significant group of warships which is nonetheless considered too small to be designated a fleet. A squadron is typically a part of a fleet. Between different navies there are no clear defining parameters to distinguish a squadron from a fleet (or from a flotilla), and the size and strength of a naval squadron varies greatly according to the country and time period. Groups of small warships, or small groups of major warships, might instead be designated flotillas by some navies according to their terminology. Since the size of a naval squadron varies greatly, the rank associated with command of a squadron also varies greatly. Before 1864 the entire fleet of the Royal Navy was divided into three squadrons, the red, the white, and the blue. Each Royal Navy squadron alone was more powerful than most national navies. Today, a squadron might number three to ten vessels, which might be major warships, transport ships, submarines, or small craft i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Battle Of Jutland
The Battle of Jutland (german: Skagerrakschlacht, the Battle of the Skagerrak) was a naval battle fought between Britain's Royal Navy Grand Fleet, under Admiral John Jellicoe, 1st Earl Jellicoe, Sir John Jellicoe, and the Imperial German Navy's High Seas Fleet, under Vice-Admiral Reinhard Scheer, during the First World War. The battle unfolded in extensive manoeuvring and three main engagements (the battlecruiser action, the fleet action and the night action), from 31 May to 1 June 1916, off the North Sea coast of Denmark's Jutland Peninsula. It was the largest naval battle and the only full-scale clash of battleships in that war. Jutland was the third fleet action between steel battleships, following the Battle of the Yellow Sea in 1904 and the Battle of Tsushima in 1905, during the Russo-Japanese War. Jutland was the last major battle in history fought primarily by battleships. Germany's High Seas Fleet intended to lure out, trap, and destroy a portion of the British Grand ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Percy Royds
Admiral Sir Percy Molyneux Rawson Royds CB CMG ADC (5 April 1874 – 25 March 1955) was a British admiral and politician. Naval career Royds was born in Rochdale, the son of Ernest Royds and the older brother of Charles Royds, also later an admiral. He was educated at Eastman's Royal Naval Academy in Southsea and joined HMS ''Britannia'', Dartmouth as a Naval Cadet in 1887. He was promoted Lieutenant in 1895 and joined HMS ''Excellent'' as a gunnery officer. In 1899 he served in the Boxer Rebellion in China as the First Lieutenant of HMS ''Arethusa''. In 1904, Royds joined Devonport Barracks as a gunnery officer. In 1905 he was promoted Commander at the unusually early age of thirty and joined the cruiser HMS ''Europa''. He later transferred to another cruiser, HMS ''Argyll''. In 1908, he was appointed Superintendent of Physical Training at Portsmouth. This was appropriate, since he had once played rugby union for Blackheath, the Barbarians and the Royal Navy and had ap ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Captain (Royal Navy)
Captain (Capt) is a senior officer rank of the Royal Navy. It ranks above Commander (Royal Navy), commander and below Commodore (Royal Navy), commodore and has a NATO ranking code of OF-5. The rank is equivalent to a colonel in the British Army and Royal Marines, and to a group captain in the Royal Air Force. There are similarly named Captain (naval), equivalent ranks in the navies of many other countries. Seagoing captains In the Royal Navy, the officer in command of any warship of the rank of Commander (Royal Navy), commander and below is informally referred to as "the captain" on board, even though holding a junior rank, but formally is titled "the commanding officer" (or CO). In former times, up until the nineteenth century, Royal Navy officers who were captains by rank and in command of a naval vessel were referred to as post-captains; this practice is now defunct. A Captain (D) or Captain Destroyers afloat was an operational commander responsible for the command of dest ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grand Fleet
The Grand Fleet was the main battlefleet of the Royal Navy during the First World War. It was established in August 1914 and disbanded in April 1919. Its main base was Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands. History Formed in August 1914 from the First Fleet and part of the Second Fleet of the Home Fleets, the Grand Fleet included 25–35 modern capital ships. It was commanded initially by Admiral Sir John Jellicoe.Heathcote, p. 130 The 10th Cruiser Squadron carried out the Northern Patrol between the Shetlands and Norway and cruisers from Cromarty and Rosyth operated a second line (and screened the fleet) in enforcing the blockade of Germany. The administrative complications of the distant blockade across the northern exits of the North Sea overwhelmed the capacity of Vice Admiral Francis Miller, the Base Admiral in Chief from 7 August 1914, devolving on the commander in chief, Admiral John Jellicoe. To relieve the administrative burdens on Miller and Jellicoe, the post of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
