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Reginald Hall
Admiral (United Kingdom), Admiral Sir William Reginald Hall (28 June 1870 – 22 October 1943), known as Blinker Hall, was the British Naval Intelligence Division (UK), Director of Naval Intelligence (DNI) from 1914 to 1919. Together with Alfred Ewing, Sir Alfred Ewing he was responsible for the establishment of the Royal Navy, Royal Navy's codebreaking operation, Room 40, which decoded the Zimmermann telegram, a major factor in the entry of the United States into World War I. Royal Navy career Reginald Hall was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, eldest son of Captain (Royal Navy), Captain William Henry Hall, the first head of Naval Intelligence, who married the daughter of the Reverend George Armfield from Armley, Leeds. Hall decided on a naval career for himself when taken on a cruise on board by his father. He joined the training ship Britannia Royal Naval College, HMS ''Britannia'' in 1884 and two years later was appointed to the armoured cruiser HMS Northampton (1876), ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Britford
Britford is a village and civil parish beside the River Avon about south-east of Salisbury in Wiltshire, England. The village is just off the A338 Salisbury-Bournemouth road. The 2011 Census recorded a parish population of 592. Geography Britford village lies towards the east of the parish, about south-east of Salisbury Cathedral. East of the village are water meadows created by the Avon. The parish extends some westward across agricultural land, with no named settlements; in this area, about 1 mile south-west of the village, a hospital begun in the Second World War has expanded into the large Salisbury District Hospital which serves a wide area. Archaeology Little Woodbury, south-west of the village, is the site of an Iron Age settlement. Excavations in 1938–39 revealed the sites of granaries, storage pits and a circular house nearly in diameter. Great Woodbury, from the village, is the remains of an Iron Age hill fort. History The place-name 'Britford' is fir ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
HMS Bellerophon (1865)
HMS ''Bellerophon'' was a central battery ironclad built for the Royal Navy in the mid-1860s. Design and description In this ship, designed by Sir Edward Reed, the power-to-weight ratio was increased; the long rows of guns on the broadside were replaced by a small number of guns, centrally placed, of the largest possible calibre; the armour was increased in thickness but reduced in length, and a sharp beak ram was combined with a classical style plough bow. This double bottom had the added advantage of allowing the engine to be carried higher, raising the centre of gravity of the whole ship and making her thereby a steadier gun platform.Parkes, p. 103 Unlike earlier classes, ''Bellerophons bow and stern had a "U" shaped profile, giving increased buoyancy at the ends noticeably absent in some earlier battleships. ''Bellerophon'' carried the first balanced rudder in Royal Navy service. Full helm could be applied by eight men in about 27 seconds,Parkes, p. 104 whereas in HMS '' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher
John Arbuthnot Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher, (25 January 1841 – 10 July 1920), commonly known as Jacky or Jackie Fisher, was a British Admiral of the Fleet. With more than sixty years in the Royal Navy, his efforts to reform the service helped to usher in an era of modernisation which saw the supersession of wooden sailing ships armed with muzzleloader, muzzle-loading cannon by steel-hulled battlecruisers, submarines and the first aircraft carriers. Fisher has a reputation as an innovator, strategist and developer of the navy rather than as a seagoing admiral involved in major battles, although in his career he experienced all these things. When appointed First Sea Lord in 1904 he removed 150 ships then on active service which were no longer useful and set about constructing modern replacements, developing a modern fleet prepared to meet German Empire, Germany during the First World War. Fisher saw the need to improve the range, accuracy and rate-of-fire of naval gunnery, and be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
HMS Cornwallis (1901)
HMS ''Cornwallis'' was a pre-dreadnought battleship of the Royal Navy. Built to counter a group of fast Russian battleships, ''Cornwallis'' and her sister ships were capable of steaming at , making them the fastest battleships in the world. The ''Duncan''-class battleships were armed with a main battery of four guns and they were broadly similar to the s, though of a slightly reduced displacement and thinner armour layout. As such, they reflected a development of the lighter second-class ships of the . ''Cornwallis'' was built between her keel laying in July 1899 and her completion in February 1904. After commissioning in 1904, ''Cornwallis'' was assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet until 1905, when she was transferred to the Channel Fleet. She stayed there for two years before being moved to the Atlantic Fleet, where she remained until 1909, at which point she returned to the Mediterranean Fleet. In 1912, she was reassigned to the Home Fleet, first to the 4th Battle Squa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pre-dreadnought Battleship
Pre-dreadnought battleships were sea-going battleships built between the mid- to late- 1880s and 1905, before the launch of in 1906. The pre-dreadnought ships replaced the ironclad battleships of the 1870s and 1880s. Built from steel, protected by case-hardened steel armour, and powered by coal-fired triple-expansion steam engines, pre-dreadnought battleships carried a main battery of very heavy guns in fully enclosed rotating turrets supported by one or more secondary batteries of lighter weapons. In contrast to the multifarious development of ironclad warships in preceding decades, the 1890s saw navies worldwide start to build battleships to a common design as dozens of ships essentially followed the design of the Royal Navy's . The similarity in appearance of battleships in the 1890s was underlined by the increasing number of ships being built. New naval powers such as Germany, Japan, the United States, and to a lesser extent Italy and Austria-Hungary, began to establish ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Channel Fleet
The Channel Fleet and originally known as the Channel Squadron was the Royal Navy formation of warships that defended the waters of the English Channel from 1854 to 1909 and 1914 to 1915. History Throughout the course of Royal Navy's history there had been different squadrons stationed in home waters. One of the earliest known naval formations to be based at Plymouth was called the Western Squadron which was the forerunner of the Channel Squadron that was later known as the Channel Fleet. In 1650 Captain William Penn, Commander-in-Chief, was charged with guarding the Channel from Beachy Head to Lands End with six ships. This system continued following the Restoration. It was the start of what was to become a Western Squadron. From 1690 the squadron operated out of Plymouth Dockyard during wartime periods, which was for most of the 18th century and early 19th century. In 1854 The Channel Squadron, sometimes known as the Particular Service Squadron, was established. The Channel Squ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
HMS Magnificent (1894)
HMS ''Magnificent'' was one of the nine pre-dreadnought battleships of the Royal Navy. She entered service in late 1895 with the Channel Fleet, remaining with the fleet through its subsequent reorganisation into the Atlantic Fleet. In 1905, an explosion caused the deaths of 18 men but she remained in service until 1906, after which she underwent a refit. She served with the Home Fleet for most of her pre-war service. Among the oldest of Britain's battleships at the time, ''Magnificent'' was a guard ship on the Humber when World War I broke out. She was then, together with her sister ship , assigned to Scapa Flow as a guard ship. In 1915, she was stripped of her main armament, and later in that year was converted to a troopship for use in the Dardanelles Campaign. Returning to England in 1916, she was inactive until late 1917, at which time she was converted to an ammunition ship. She continued to serve in this role until 1921, at which time she was decommissioned before bei ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Commander (Royal Navy)
Commander (Cdr) is a senior officer rank of the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom. It is immediately junior to captain and immediately senior to the rank of lieutenant commander. Officers holding the junior rank of lieutenant commander are not considered to be commanders. History The title (originally 'master and commander') originated in around 1670 to describe Royal Navy officers who commanded ships of war too large to be commanded by a lieutenant, but too small to warrant the assignment of a post-captain, or (before about 1770) a sailing-master who was in charge of a ship's navigation. These ships were usually unrated sloops-of-war of no more than 20 guns, fireships, hospital ships and store ships. The commanding officer of this type of ship was responsible for both sailing and fighting the ship and was thus its 'master and commander'. Before 1750, the rank was broadly considered as the limit of advancement for those without patronage, especially those who had been promot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
HMS Australia (1886)
HMS ''Australia'' was one of seven armoured cruisers built for the Royal Navy in the mid-1880s. She was assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet in 1889 and remained there until 1893 when she returned home. The ship was assigned to the Coast Guard Squadron for the next decade before she was placed in reserve in 1903. ''Australia'' was sold for scrap in 1905. Design and description ''Australia'' had a length between perpendiculars of , a beam of and a draught of . Designed to displace , all of the ''Orlando''-class ships proved to be overweight and displaced approximately . The ship was powered by a pair of three-cylinder triple-expansion steam engines, each driving one shaft, which were designed to produce a total of and a maximum speed of using steam provided by four boilers with forced draught. During her sea trials, ''Australia'' reached . The ship carried a maximum of of coal which was designed to give her a range of at a speed of . The ship's complement was 484 offi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Whale Island, Hampshire
Whale Island is a small island in Portsmouth Harbour, close by Portsea Island. It is home to HMS ''Excellent'', the oldest shore training establishment within the Royal Navy, and the location of the Navy Command Headquarters. The island is linked to Portsea Island and thence to the mainland by road bridges. Early history Ordnance Survey maps of Portsmouth Harbour from 1862 show Whale Island as a narrow strip: its east-to-west dimensions were similar to present times, but north to south it measured only tens of yards. To its northwest was Little Whale Island.Maps, documents and photographs on display in the Quarterdeck building, HMS Excellent. Modern Whale Island is predominantly reclaimed land, using the deposits dredged from Portsmouth harbour during the 19th century, increasing the land area by about 125%. It was constructed with the help of the many prisoners taken in the Napoleonic Wars. Expansion During 1867 a viaduct was constructed from the north wall of the dockyard t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
HMS Excellent (shore Establishment)
HMS ''Excellent'' is a Royal Navy "stone frigate" (shore establishment) sited on Whale Island near Portsmouth in Hampshire. HMS ''Excellent'' is itself part of the Maritime Warfare School, with a headquarters at HMS ''Collingwood'', although a number of lodger units are resident within the site, the principal of which is the headquarters of Fleet Commander (Navy Command Headquarters). History RN Gunnery School afloat In the 1829 a Commander George Smith advocated the establishment of a Naval School of Gunnery; accordingly, the following year, the third-rate HMS ''Excellent'' was converted into a training ship and moored just north of Portsmouth Dockyard, opposite Fareham Creek. Smith was given oversight and set up ''Excellent'' not only as a training establishment but also as a platform for experimental firing of new weapons (the creek was used as a firing range). In 1832 Smith was replaced in command by Captain Thomas Hastings, under whom the school grew both numerically a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Naval College, Greenwich
The Royal Naval College, Greenwich, was a Royal Navy training establishment between 1873 and 1998, providing courses for naval officers. It was the home of the Royal Navy's staff college, which provided advanced training for officers. The equivalent in the British Army was the Staff College, Camberley, and the equivalent in the Royal Air Force was the RAF Staff College, Bracknell. History The Royal Naval College, Greenwich, was founded by an Order in Council dated 16 January 1873. The establishment of its officers consisted of a President, who was always a Flag Officer; a Captain, Royal Navy; a Director of Studies; and Professors of Mathematics, Physical Science, Chemistry, Applied Mechanics, and Fortification. It was to take in officers who were already Sub-Lieutenants and to operate as "the university of the Navy". The Director of Studies, a civilian, was in charge of an Academic Board, while the Captain of the College was a naval officer who acted as chief of staff. The Roy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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