50 Fun Facts About Royal Navy

Which admiral, known as 'Old Grog' for a grogram cloak, ordered the Royal Navy's rum ration watered down in 1740?

Edward Vernon gave the drink its name, and the drink gave English the word groggy. The mix of half a pint of rum to a quart of water began on his West Indies station to curb drunkenness.

Black Tot Day, when Royal Navy sailors wore armbands to mourn the last daily rum ration, fell in which year?

The last tot was poured on 31 July 1970, and one training base staged a mock funeral with a black coffin, drummers and a piper. The Admiralty Board ruled that rum no longer suited sailors running delicate machinery.

Which nickname for Britons comes from the citrus juice the Royal Navy added to sailors' grog against scurvy?

Limey stuck even though switching from lemons to colonial limes roughly halved the vitamin C and let scurvy creep back. Lemons came first; limes replaced them because they grew in British colonies.

Which future novelist, in turban and stage make-up, toured HMS Dreadnought in 1910 posing as Abyssinian royalty?

Virginia Woolf, still Virginia Stephen, was one of six hoaxers led by Horace de Vere Cole who were shown round the fleet's flagship with full honours. The visitors reportedly greeted everything with cries of 'bunga bunga!'.

After Trafalgar, Nelson's body was carried home to England preserved in a cask of what?

Brandy did the pickling, which is why rum's nickname 'Nelson's blood' rests on a legend that sailors drank from the cask on the voyage. At Gibraltar the body was moved to a lead-lined coffin filled with spirits of wine for the final leg.

Simon, the ship's cat awarded the Dickin Medal, served on which Royal Navy ship held on the Yangtze in 1949?

HMS Amethyst was held by the People's Liberation Army for ten weeks before slipping her chain and dashing downriver in the dark on 30 July 1949. Simon kept rats off the dwindling food and died soon after reaching Britain.

In the 'Cod Wars' that ended in 1976, Royal Navy warships shielded trawlers from which country's coastguard?

Iceland won every round, and the 1976 settlement gave it a 200-mile fishery zone that foreign fleets could enter only with permission. Coastguard cutters used long hawsers to slice the nets off British boats.

Which phrase for shady money began as cash a Royal Navy crew raised by selling fat scraped from cooking pots?

Slush fund was the sailors' name for that money, kept apart from the ship's accounts and spent on small comforts for the crew. The fat went to tallow makers for candles and soap.

Which 'Sailor King', at sea from age thirteen, allowed Royal Navy officers to drink the loyal toast sitting down?

William IV had banged his head standing up too fast below decks, so the seated toast spared every officer the same low beams. The Royal Canadian Navy keeps the custom as well.

At Trafalgar Night dinners each 21 October, Royal Navy officers close the evening with which toast to Nelson?

The Immortal Memory is proposed by the guest of honour at the end of a speech, and in 2005 the monarch gave it as 'the Immortal Memory of Lord Nelson and those who fell with him'. The dinners are held in the wardroom.

Which Tudor monarch's 1546 letters patent set up the Navy Board that ran dockyards and supplies until 1832?

Henry VIII is often called the father of the standing Royal Navy because of it, and the board's separate Sick and Hurt, Transport and Victualling offices were swept away with it in 1832.

At which Thames royal dockyard, founded in 1513, was Francis Drake knighted aboard the Golden Hind in 1581?

Deptford was the most significant royal dockyard of the Tudor period, and the knighting came at the end of Drake's circumnavigation of the world. The yard went on building for the navy for three more centuries.

Which Commonwealth 'General at Sea' was buried in Westminster Abbey, then dug up and put in a common grave in 1661?

Robert Blake, often called the father of the Royal Navy, was evicted from the Abbey on Charles II's orders along with other Cromwellians. His bones went into St Margaret's churchyard next door.

Which diarist, as Secretary to the Admiralty, introduced the 1677 exam that every would-be lieutenant had to pass?

Samuel Pepys never served at sea, yet his reforms are credited with the early professionalisation of the navy, and a lieutenant's seniority was dated from the day he passed. Pepys had started in 1660 as Clerk of the Acts.

Which admiral's 1740–44 voyage round the world captured a Manila galleon carrying 1.3 million silver coins?

George Anson came home rich for life, then at the Admiralty moved the Marines from Army to Navy control and put officers into uniform. Only three of his six ships survived rounding Cape Horn.

At which 1798 battle in Aboukir Bay did Nelson destroy the French fleet that had carried Bonaparte's army to Egypt?

The Battle of the Nile stranded Bonaparte's army and handed Britain the Mediterranean for years, and Nelson was made a baron for it, though privately he thought the reward too small. Nine French ships of the line were captured.

Nelson's right arm was lost in a failed 1797 night assault on Santa Cruz, capital of which Canary island?

Tenerife's defenders shot Nelson as he stepped ashore, and the arm was amputated that night aboard ship. Three years earlier the siege of Calvi in Corsica had already cost him the sight of his right eye.

Nelson lies beneath the dome of which London church, in a 16th-century sarcophagus first made for Cardinal Wolsey?

St Paul's Cathedral put Nelson directly under the middle of the dome, the body sealed in two more coffins once the pickled remains reached England. The crypt places him at the exact centre of the building.

Which captain, dismissed after an 1814 stock-exchange fraud, went on to command the navies of Chile, Brazil and Greece?

Thomas Cochrane so harried the French coast that Napoleon called him 'the Sea Wolf', and his exploits fed both Hornblower and Jack Aubrey. Three Lord Chancellors later concluded he should have been acquitted.

Royal Navy press gangs stopping American ships to seize sailors helped push the United States into which war?

The War of 1812 grew partly from impressment, which turned American opinion against Britain, and the navy never pressed men again once Napoleon's 1814 surrender let it shrink. Britain claimed the men it took were deserters.

HMS Victory, built from the timber of some 6,000 trees, had her keel laid in 1759 at which royal dockyard?

Chatham floated her out in 1765, six years after the keel went down, and about 90 per cent of that timber was oak. Today she serves as flagship of the First Sea Lord while sitting in dry dock.

The 1889 Naval Defence Act pegged the Royal Navy's battleship strength to which benchmark, aimed at France and Russia?

Next two largest navies combined was the rule, and it bought ten battleships and dozens of cruisers for an extra £20 million over four years. The spending set off a building race that Germany soon joined.

The 1909 cry 'We want ___ and we won't wait' demanded how many new dreadnoughts be laid down in a single year?

Eight was the number a Conservative MP put into the slogan as panic grew over German building, and Asquith compromised on four at once with four more by 1910 if needed. The phrase caught on with the press and public.

What motto did Admiral 'Jacky' Fisher, First Sea Lord from 1904 to 1910, adopt when he was made a baron in 1909?

Fear God and dread nought punned on HMS Dreadnought, whose outline design came from the committee Fisher chaired. He ran the navy as First Sea Lord from 1904 to 1910 and again briefly in the First World War.

Which Royal Navy captain reached the South Pole in January 1912, five weeks after Amundsen, and died on the way back?

Robert Falcon Scott and four companions found Amundsen's tent already standing at the pole, then died about twelve miles short of their next supply depot. A search party recovered Scott's journals the following spring.

Which naval surgeon gave scurvy patients oranges and lemons aboard HMS Salisbury in 1747, an early controlled trial?

James Lind split twelve patients into pairs on different remedies, and only the citrus pair recovered, yet the Admiralty waited until 1795 to issue lemon juice fleet-wide. The trial is remembered for its use of control groups.

Which admiral, 'ABC' to the lower deck, said a new tradition takes 300 years while evacuating Crete in 1941?

Andrew Cunningham's full line was that the navy takes three years to build a ship and three hundred to build a tradition, so the evacuation would go on despite the losses. Two months earlier he beat the Italians off Cape Matapan by night.

In which year was the Fleet Air Arm formally handed back to Admiralty control under the 1937 'Inskip Award'?

1939 saw the handover on 24 May, months before war broke out, and the force was renamed the Air Branch of the Royal Navy. It had been created as a part of the RAF in April 1924.

Which curved bow ramp from Lieutenant Commander Douglas Taylor's 1973 thesis helped Harriers take off from short decks?

Ski-jump ramps were met with scepticism until trials, and HMS Invincible became the first major ship fitted with one, set at a cautious seven degrees. The first launch off it at sea came on 30 October 1980.

Which carrier, flagship of the 1982 Falklands task force, served India as INS Viraat until 2017?

HMS Hermes sailed for the South Atlantic just three days after the Argentine invasion, and India bought her in 1986 for another three decades of service. Her final decommissioning came on 6 March 2017.

Which carrier, assembled at Rosyth from blocks built in six yards, was commissioned at Portsmouth in December 2017?

HMS Queen Elizabeth is three times the size of the Invincible class and took over as Fleet Flagship from the assault ship HMS Albion. Her sister, HMS Prince of Wales, followed her into service in 2019.

BAE Systems builds Britain's Astute-class submarines in which Cumbrian town, birthplace of Holland 1 in 1901?

Barrow-in-Furness will deliver seven of the class, the first of which, HMS Astute, was launched by the Duchess of Cornwall in 2007 and commissioned in 2010. Vickers built the navy's very first submarine in the same yard.

Holland 1, the Royal Navy's first submarine, is displayed at the submarine museum in which Hampshire town?

Gosport's Royal Navy Submarine Museum has had her as its centrepiece since she was recovered and restored in the 1980s and 1990s. She was launched on 2 October 1901 at the Vickers yard.

Which base on the Gare Loch, commissioned as HMS Neptune, is home to Britain's Vanguard-class submarines?

Faslane sits on an inlet of the Firth of Clyde, and the whole submarine fleet, attack boats included, was to be gathered there by 2020. Its formal name is HMNB Clyde.

Which naval base at Plymouth, nicknamed 'Guzz' by sailors, is the largest in Western Europe?

Devonport is one of the navy's three operating bases, alongside Portsmouth and the Clyde, and its dockyard dates from 1691. Marines use the Guzz nickname as readily as sailors do.

Royal Navy officers begin at Britannia Royal Naval College, completed in 1905 on a hill above which Devon port?

Dartmouth is where cadet Prince Philip first made an impression on his future wife during a royal visit in the summer before the Second World War. Philip was a naval cadet at the college at the time.

What do sailors call a shore establishment like HMS Raleigh, which carries a ship's name but is built on dry land?

Stone frigate replaced the old practice of housing sailors on hulks moored offshore, and HMS Excellent, a training school opened in 1891, was an early example. Shore bases are formally commissioned just as ships are.

What nickname does the Royal Navy hold as the oldest of Britain's armed forces, with roots in the early 16th century?

The Senior Service label follows from the navy's claim to the English Navy of the early Tudors, which makes it older than the Army by more than a century. Its professional head, the First Sea Lord, sits on the Defence Council.

Which lowest officer rank in today's Royal Navy was once filled by 'young gentlemen' sent to sea by their families?

Midshipman ranks with an Army second lieutenant and an RAF pilot officer, and from 1661 boys could be sent aboard with official papers to learn the trade. Most were aged between fifteen and twenty-two.

Which Royal Navy rate, level with an Army corporal, is nicknamed a 'killick' after the fouled anchor on the badge?

Leading rating is the step between able rating and petty officer, and killick is an old word for a small anchor, shown on the badge wrapped in rope. Sailors use the same word for the rank and the person holding it.

Which five-star rank, formally established in 1688, was held by Prince Philip and Lord Mountbatten?

Admiral of the Fleet was formally established in 1688, and King Charles III, an honorary holder since 2012, assumed the rank in full the day after his accession. No honorary appointments have been made since 2014.

The Royal Navy's Thursday toast, 'a bloody war or a sickly season', was a wish for what among those drinking it?

Promotion came fastest when death thinned the list of officers above, so a war or an epidemic was worth a glass. Friday's toast, 'a willing foe and sea room', is in the same spirit.

Which Royal Navy order for an extra tot of rum may now come only from royalty or the Admiralty Board?

Splice the mainbrace began as the reward after one of the hardest jobs in a sailing ship's rigging, and the Royal Navy now limits the order to the King, the Royal Family or the Admiralty Board. The reward was an extra ration of rum.

Which Royal Navy march, with words by the actor David Garrick hailing the victories of 1759, was composed by Boyce?

Heart of Oak was written for Garrick's pantomime Harlequin's Invasion, which opened at Drury Lane on New Year's Eve 1759, the 'wonderful year' of Quebec, Minden and Quiberon Bay. It is also the march of the Canadian and New Zealand navies.

Which everyday phrase for 'be quiet' began as the bosun's call that dismissed all the Royal Navy crew not on watch?

Pipe down was one of a set of whistled signals, and the same boatswain's call piped officers aboard, called hands to meals and sent the watch below. The silver whistle is still carried at ceremonies today.

Which nickname for a Royal Navy sailor came from the waterproofing on ships' rigging and on seamen's pigtails?

Jack Tar was never an insult, and sailors happily used it of themselves; hemp rigging rotted fast in the damp unless soaked in tar. One 1915 account has seamen plaiting their hair and smearing it with high-grade tar.

In which year was the Duke of York and Albany's Maritime Regiment of Foot, ancestor of the Royal Marines, raised?

1664 is the founding the Royal Marines still celebrate, the regiment having formed on 28 October that year at the Honourable Artillery Company's grounds. King Charles III became their Captain General in October 2022.

Royal Marines recruits earn the green beret after 32 weeks at the Commando Training Centre near which Devon village?

Lympstone's course ends with a month-long commando test phase run over Dartmoor and Woodbury Common, and the beret is the distinguishing mark of a commando. The centre sits between Exeter and Exmouth on the Exe estuary.

Which 1878 Gilbert and Sullivan operetta's First Lord, who rose by never going to sea, mocked the newsagent W. H. Smith?

HMS Pinafore's Sir Joseph Porter was spotted as W. H. Smith by audiences, critics and even Disraeli, though Gilbert insisted the First Lord in the opera was a Radical. It opened at the Opera Comique on 25 May 1878.

Which novelist's Aubrey–Maturin series, filmed as Master and Commander in 2003, pairs a navy captain with a surgeon?

Patrick O'Brian completed twenty novels in the sequence, starting with Master and Commander in 1969, and Peter Weir's film drew incidents from several of them. Stephen Maturin, the surgeon, is an Irish–Catalan physician.