The coasts of the British Isles extend for more than a thousand miles, but many of the most vital areas in which Great Britain's naval forces operated in wars with continental powers are less than a hundred miles from her shores; some are less than ten. The choice of the right base for these forces was often of vital importance, for a shift of less than a hundred miles along the coast might have made all the difference between success and failure. This means that the naval organization of the United Kingdom has never been able to settle into a fixed pattern; it has had to be changed with every shift of continental power.
When Henry VII (King of England, 1485-1509) founded the Royal Navy, England's main foreign interest lay in northern France. The new fighting service needed a Channel base. The King chose Portsmouth, a large, natural harbor which empties through a narrow, easily-guarded channel in to sheltered waters behind the Isle of Wight. It was only twenty miles from the merchant port of Southampton, whose skilled workmen could be impressed for the King's service.
Portsmouth was a first-class base in time of war, but it was too exposed to be a dock- yard port in peace. The King could not afford to maintain a standing army to garrison the port, so ships laid up there would have been at the mercy of any small raiding force.
The King gave security to his building and repair yard by locating it at Deptford on the Thames, only a few miles down stream from his main stronghold, the Tower of London, and over thirty miles from open water. Henry's successor built another yard at Woolwich, five miles down the Thames from Deptford.
The sea power built up by the early Tudors began to make itself felt as a factor in world affairs during the reign of Elizabeth I. The main force of the Royal Navy took no part in the dashing expeditions to the Spanish Main; those forays were mounted by private enterprise. The bulk of the Queen's ships were kept at home to protect England and to help the Dutch in their struggle for independence.
Ships operating off the southeast coast needed a base in the Thames estuary, for the dockyards at Deptford and Woolwich were too far from the sea. A new base was established at the Medway port of Chatham. This base grew very rapidly; the anti-Armada fleet was prepared and commissioned there. The main Spanish threat lay near at hand, a powerful army mustered in present-day Belgium. The English fleet was sent down-channel to intercept the Armada before it could reach this army and convey it to England. The fleet used Plymouth, the home of two of its Admirals and many of its Captains, as its western base.
There was a long period of peace and naval stagnation after the conclusion of the war with Spain. Chatham continued to expand during this period. It replaced Deptford as the principal dockyard. The fact that three of England's four naval establishments faced east reflected the great importance which her statesmen attached to the affairs of the Low Countries. It meant that the Royal Navy was well prepared for the three Dutch wars, the first of which began in 1653.
These wars were a struggle for maritime supremacy between the two leading mercantile powers. Their navies fought to pass convoys into the North Atlantic and to sweep the North Sea clear of the shipping of their enemies.
War brought about an expansion of England's naval organization around the Thames complex of dockyards. Ships prepared and commissioned at Chatham, Deptford, or Woolwich were formed into a fleet at an anchorage off the town of Sheerness, where the Medway joins the Thames. It was found desirable to set up a satellite base there, with facilities for making minor repairs and providing stores and provisions.
To the south of the Thames, Dover was brought into use as an operational base from which squadrons could patrol the Straits. The third new base was Harwich, a riverport forty miles north of the Thames estuary and close to the rich North Sea fishing grounds.
There was another important, but unrelated, naval development during the period of the Dutch wars. When Charles II married a Portuguese princess, the bride's dowry included the Moroccan town of Tangier. Squadrons began to ply between England and Tangier, her first Mediterranean base. Plymouth was fortified and equipped to victual ships as they entered or left the Channel, also to carry out small repairs.
When the Dutch wars were concluded in 1674, attention turned to the growing power of France. The two principal maritime powers stopped bickering for mercantile supremacy and joined hands against the common enemy. In taking up arms against Louis XIV, England embarked on the first of a century-and-a-quarter-long series of wars with France.
This made it necessary to shift the orientation of her naval organization back to the Channel. Portsmouth began to replace Chatham as the principal British naval base. It was a slow process, for to build new dry docks and workshops took time. When the work was completed, Portsmouth proved to be an excellent base. Outside the inner harbor there was safe anchorage for the largest fleet, convoy, or expedition in the sheltered anchorage of St. Helen's Roads.
The military geography of the Channel was an important factor in British naval supremacy during the wars with France (1688-1815). The French had no Portsmouth, for there was no continental harbor between Brest and the mouth of the Scheldt which was large enough to shelter a fleet. The prevailing wind blew obliquely up-Channel and towards the south coast of England. These two circumstances accounted for Britain's intense desire for the neutrality or friendship of the Low Countries.
As Napoleon realized, a fleet at Antwerp would have been "a pistol pointing at the heart of England," meaning at the Thames estuary and London. If Antwerp belonged to a weak naval power at the outbreak of war, the threat was greatly reduced. Belgium might be overrun, but it was almost impossible for a conqueror to move a fleet there to exploit his military successes. A weak fleet had no chance of fighting its way up-Channel; a strong fleet would have been harried from the rear, as was the Armada, and any crippled ships would have drifted onto the south coast of England, the lee shore in a prevailing wind.
Since the French could not obtain permanent possession of Antwerp, Brest was their most important northern base. British fleets spent long periods close to Brest; there was a constant possibility of a general action near the place, and in those stormy waters ships often suffered serious damage.
It became necessary to have a dockyard in the Western Channel to repair the battered ships. A site was found on the Hamoaze, a natural flooded valley which empties into the western side of Plymouth Sound. A new town called Plymouth Dock, or more simply Dock, grew up around the new yard. It was separated from the proud old merchant city of Plymouth by waste marshy land.
Plymouth lacked many of the advantages of Portsmouth. In bad weather ships could not get out of the dock into the Sound. The entrance is so tortuous that in winter sailing ships were sometimes delayed for weeks on end. The Sound was not a safe anchorage, for it was exposed to the south and west. Fleets blockading Brest were in the greatest danger in south-westerly winds. If they were driven off their blockade stations, they had to run thirty miles up-Channel beyond Plymouth to the shelter of Torbay.
The fleets which were supported by the principal dockyards kept the enemy's main fleets penned in their harbors. They could not, however, prevent individual raiders and privateers from reaching open waters. Vast numbers of cruisers and smaller vessels had to be spread about the seas, under the distant cover of the fleets, to guard friendly shipping from these raiders and to maintain the blockade by hunting down the enemy's merchantmen.
These cruising ships were sent wherever merchant shipping might be found. The most heavily patrolled area was the region known as the Soundings where homeward bound merchantmen made their latitude before turning east to cross the hundred fathom line and run up-Channel. An immense number of heavy-laden ships passed through the area, a tempting bait for hostile raiders.
The British had one priceless advantage in the struggle to safeguard trade. Their possession of Ireland gave them bases closer to the Soundings than any French port, and to windward of the vital area, a decisive advantage in the sailing era. A cruiser base was set up at Kinsale in 1689, only a few months after the outbreak of war with France. Other southern Irish bases were developed during the eighteenth century.
The British hold on these important harbors was never absolutely secure. The loyalty of Ireland was uncertain. It was easy for England's enemies to stir the Irish into armed rebellion, and frequent attempts were made to land troops to support such risings. The British, therefore, made special arrangements to hold and relieve the naval ports in the event of invasion.
They built a small dockyard at Pembroke in the projecting peninsula of South Wales, the nearest place to Southern Ireland. This base formed a bastion at the southern entrance to the Irish sea and was available as a sally port from which to mount a counter offensive in Ireland.
Many other ports were used as minor naval bases during the wars with France. The east coast harbors of Harwich and Yarmouth were important when the French occupied northwest Europe during the Napoleonic wars.
The Pax Britannica
France continued to be Britain's most probable enemy for the greater part of the century of relative peace which followed Waterloo. The naval organization which had been built up during the French wars was maintained in readiness for another round with the same enemy.
The organization centered around the three great southern dockyards: Portsmouth, Chatham, and Dock. The western yard was re-named Devonport during this period. So much building took place that Plymouth and Devonport joined to form one larger city. Early differences were forgotten, and the new city became primarily a naval community.
The growth of these towns was one consequence of a most important change in British naval organization, a long overdue reform of the manning arrangements. In the eighteenth century seamen had been recruited as casual labor. "'hen insufficient men offered themselves, press-gangs had found the remainder by force. Changing conditions made it imperative to form a regular long-service navy in which the men of the lower deck enlisted for a term of years.
The men were formed into three manning divisions, one division being attached to each of the three principal dockyard ports. Ships were allocated to one of the ports for manning purposes. They usually commissioned and paid off at their "Home Ports." Barracks were built beside the dockyards to accommodate the men between commissions.
The eighteenth-century seamen had learned his job by practical experience, usually in a merchant ship. The men of the new regular navy had to be trained from scratch by the navy, and they had to acquire an ever-increasing number of new skills as nineteenth- century industry fashioned new and more complex weapons. Special schools were set up, some to teach new entries the rudiments of their trade; others to teach experienced men to handle complicated weapons. The new entry establishments were built away from the naval barracks, but the gunnery and other technical schools were an integral part of the Home Port organization. Men went to them for courses between commissions. The schools in the Portsmouth command were more important than those at the other two ports. They were the senior schools, the fonts of specialist knowledge, and they were entrusted with all officer training as well as training the ratings of the Portsmouth division.
The period saw major changes in the system of war bases along the south coast. Advances in civil engineering enabled the French to correct their naval weakness in the central Channel by building a large artificial harbor at Cherbourg. The development of steam propulsion removed the old restrictions on movement in the confined waters of the Channel. The invention of the torpedo provided a serious threat to a battle fleet sent to carry out the classical British policy of close blockade.
When the Royal Navy devised the torpedo boat destroyer to protect battleships from torpedo attack, a chain of bases had to be established in which they could replenish wherever the battle fleet was operating. The bases were made torpedo proof, so that heavier ships could replenish in them in safety.
Several major works were put in hand to meet these needs. A large new artificial harbor was built at Portland, fifty miles west of Portsmouth. A breakwater was built across Plymouth Sound, making it a secure anchorage in bad weather as well as providing protection against torpedo attack. A new Admiralty harbor was constructed at Dover. Owing to the geography of the Portsmouth approaches, new seaward defenses were not required there.
The last occasion when France and Britain came to the verge of war was the Fashoda Incident in 1898. Navally Britain was well prepared. The lynch-pins of her naval organization were the three First Class Bases Portsmouth, Chatham, and Plymouth, the headquarters of the three naval commands. There were Second Class Bases with less elaborate facilities at Pembroke, Sheerness, and Queenstown, the port of Cork in southern Ireland. Portland, Dover, Harwich, and Berehaven in Bantry Bay were classed as War Anchorages and were intended to be the main operational bases.
The crisis of 1898 was soon followed by a diplomatic revolution in which France became a friend, with Germany the probable enemy. The new international situation led to a drastic modification of the British system of naval bases. There was no base on the east coast north of Harwich, only cramped river ports lightly fortified for the protection of merchant shipping.
The re-deployment against Germany was much more difficult than the shift to the south coast after 1688. The needs of a twentieth-century fleet were much more elaborate and specialized than those of wooden sailing ships. The southern yards had grown up with the new navy, and they were specially equipped to meet its needs. They were a unique and essential investment in naval power. Nevertheless, they were too far from the scene of operations to provide immediate support for a fleet at war with Germany.
The Admiralty decided to build a new first class base on the northeast coast. A site for the dockyard was found at Rosyth on the northern side of the Firth of Forth. It was conveniently placed to draw upon the skilled manpower and other resources of the highly industrialized Firth-Clyde valley. The Firth was a fine anchorage, suitable to accommodate the largest fleet.
When work began on Rosyth, the war plan of the Royal Navy called for a close blockade of the German North Sea ports. Rosyth was intended to support all units of the blockading fleet. Armament, naval store and victualling depots, and hospitals were built there as well as the dockyard. A few years later the policy of close blockade was abandoned and replaced by a plan for distant blockade by control of the Northern Passage between Scotland and Iceland. To enforce such a blockade, the battle fleet had to be based north of Rosyth. Two war anchorages were selected as satellites of Rosyth, one off Invergordon in the Moray Firth, the other in Scapa Flow, the vast natural harbor formed by the Orkneys.
The defenses of these anchorages were not complete at the outbreak of war in 1914. There were several submarine alarms in Scapa Flow during the first autumn of the war. The Grand Fleet left the Flow and spent some wearing and unhappy months paying fleeting visits to remote sea lochs in Scotland and Ireland.
When the bases had been made submarine proof, the fleet was distributed between Scapa, Invergordon, and Rosyth. The dockyard and depots of the base at Rosyth looked after the immediate needs of the fleet. Ships in need of long refits and lengthy repairs were sent round to the southern yards to leave Rosyth ready to deal with ships damaged in battle.
The Grand Fleet held the Northern Passage. A large force of destroyers based on Harwich secured the confined waters of the southern North Sea. This force joined up with the Grand Fleet whenever an action seemed imminent.
In the opening months of the war, trade on the high seas was protected by a small force of cruisers working out of established bases. Surprisingly few ships were required compared with the sailing days. But the situation in home waters was complicated by the advent of the mine, for Germany began to mine the waters off the east coast within twenty-four hours of the outbreak of war. A large minesweeping force was improvised out of commandeered trawlers. Most of these vessels were manned by ex-fishermen, and the east coast fishing ports such as Lowestoft were transformed in to naval bases for the duration of the war.
The German campaign of unrestricted U-boat warfare eventually brought back the conditions of the sailing era to the ocean trade routes. To meet the submarine threat, large numbers of small warships had once more to be spread about the high seas for the protection of merchant shipping. The Irish ports were called into service again as bases for the defensive flotillas because, as in the past, they were close to the focal areas. The southwestern approaches were covered by ships from Queenstown, the northwestern by ships from Lough Swilly.
The Inter-War Years
Considerable changes took place in the naval organization of the United Kingdom between the two wars. A variety of influences were at work. One of the most powerful was an urgent desire for economy and disarmament. The cold winds of retrenchment blew with exceptional severity in the twenties. The fine modern dockyard at Rosyth was placed in reserve; its workshops were reduced to care and maintenance, and its basins were used to accommodate destroyers laid up in reserve. The small dockyard at Pembroke was completely closed down and abandoned. The only new base to survive was Invergordon, which was kept in use with very limited facilities as a training base for the Home Fleet.
The troubles in Ireland and the eventual establishment of the Irish Free State threatened the existence of the important Irish bases. In the peace settlement of 1921, a happy compromise was reached. The Irish recognized the peculiar importance of the bases, and Britain retained the right to use, fortify, and garrison the ports of Berehaven, Queenstown, and Lough Swilly. This important right was given up shortly before the outbreak of World War II.
Another change which occurred shortly before the war was the re-establishment of the navy air service. The first Royal Naval Air Service was absorbed by the Royal Air Force on its formation in 1917. The new Fleet Air Arm was born in 1937. It was given a strictly limited charter, to operate shipborne aircraft. It was not allowed to mount operations from airfields except under air force control; but it needed shore stations for training, and a number of R.A.F. stations were turned over to the navy.
World War II
There was no period of phoney war at sea during the second World War. A British merchant ship was torpedoed and sunk by a U-boat within ten hours of the declaration of war; a fleet carrier was lost in the same way two weeks later. From the beginning the air forces of both sides attempted to attack their enemy's ships of war.
Britain's maritime forces resumed the tasks they had laid down in 1918. The Home Fleet went back to Scapa Flow and re-established the blockade of the Northern Passage; escort groups were re-formed to convoy merchantmen through the Western approaches, and minesweepers resumed the endless struggle to keep the coastal shipping lanes open.
The well-tried organization worked satisfactorily until the Germans attacked in the West. The shattering success of their first blow cut off the British army, and the Royal Navy was called in to bring it home. The evacuation operation was mounted from Dover, a Cinque Port and one of the most ancient war harbors of the Kingdom.
The British army was saved, but the Germans went on to overrun France and revolutionize the maritime situation. When their conquests were complete they occupied the European coasts from the Pyrenees to the North Cape. They had won new outlets to the North Atlantic through the Biscay Ports, and they now faced the south and east coasts of the United Kingdom across narrow seas. The Royal Navy was faced with tremendous new problems at sea; at the same time many of its most important yards and bases had become exposed to the full weight of the Luftwaffe.
The Royal Navy's first duty was to keep the ocean and coastal shipping lanes open. The United Kingdom had to keep up her imports of food and raw materials in order to live and to forge new weapons. The country had the densest railway network in the world, but her economy required the delivery of bulk cargoes by sea, not only to her great ports but also by coasters to innumerable places around the coasts.
The dependence on seaborne trade was aggravated by the pattern of trade. In peacetime, half the general cargoes and two-fifths of the oil imports had been disembarked in the southeast corner of the country, London taking the lion's share. With the Germans established in France and the Low Countries, large ocean-going vessels could not be risked around the south and east coasts. They were restricted to western ports, principally to Liverpool and the Clyde. Goods for the vulnerable areas had to be transferred to smaller, less precious ships, for onward carriage.
It was obviously as important as ever to keep hostile surface raiders out of the North Atlantic. This proved comparatively simple. The Home Fleet continued to dominate the Northern Passage despite German occupation of Norway. Single ships beat the blockade on occasions during the dark and stormy winters, but the fleet made every escape a most hazardous enterprise. A new surface blockade had to be set up to seal off the Biscay ports. The blockade was maintained by cruisers patrolling from Plymouth and linking hands with a task force based at Gibraltar.
The defense of ocean shipping from air and submarine attack was a much greater problem than the surface threat. The independence of Eire meant a loss of a strategic advantage. The Luftwaffe based on Brittany could attack shipping passing south of Ireland; without Irish bases, Britain could not ward off these attacks. We had to give up the use of the southwestern approaches, which were sealed with defensive minefields. That left only the northwestern approaches as our last tenuous lifeline to the free world.
The command of the ocean escort force and convoy operations had been vested in the Commander-in-Chief at Plymouth. After the shift to the north a new arrangement had to be made. A new command, Western Approaches, was formed with its headquarters at Liverpool. That port became the main base of the ocean escort force.
The loyalty of Ulster enabled an entirely new advanced base of the ocean escort force to be built at Londonderry. A working-up base for new escorts was set up in the Western Isles off the coast of Scotland, where there were few amenities to district ships' companies from the grim business of training for war.
In addition to the Home Fleet, the Plymouth force, and the ocean escort force, local escort groups, minesweepers, and the fast coastal craft carried the war to the enemy by operating out of innumerable harbors around the British Isles. The most important of these forces was the one which was responsible for the protection of the east coast convoys, which kept London supplied with coal, raw materials, and other necessities.
The east coast escorts had a most difficult task. The shipping under their care had to use well-known channels between innumerable shoals. In those confined waters convoys had to be formed in long vulnerable lines, the hazards of navigation making orthodox formations impossible. The convoy routes were within range of shore-based aircraft, patrol craft, and small submarines. The whole area is shallow and was ideal for minelaying.
To assist the convoys and their escorts, the vital channels were buoyed and protected by a formidable barrier of minefields. A large number of ships was required to protect convoys. Working between the well-established bases of Rosyth and Sheerness and supported by minesweepers and patrol craft from many of the east coast merchant and fishing ports, they fought and won a tough, highly specialized private war.
When the Allies went over to the offensive and began preparations for Overlord, the chain of south coast bases established in readiness for a war with France in the nineteenth century were available for the liberation of France in the twentieth. Every harbor and every facility was required. The greatest concentration took place around Portsmouth, the base first set up for cross-channel operations nearly four hundred and fifty years before D-day.
Maintenance and Training in World War II
The German occupation of the European coast had serious repercussions on the shore-side organization of the Royal Navy. The sea-routes to Portsmouth and Chatham were so open to attack that for several years heavy ships could not go to either yard for repairs. The main function of Chatham and its satellite at Sheerness was the maintenance of the ships of the east coast escort force.
Rosyth and Plymouth could be reached by the most valuable ships in reasonable safety; but the Scottish base was fully occupied with the routine refits, dockings, and repairs of the ships of the Home Fleet.
The difficult situation created by the German conquests was aggravated by the operations of their air force. Both Plymouth and Portsmouth were heavily attacked. The majority of bombs fell outside the yards, destroying both civic centers and many workmen's homes. Some damage was caused in each yard, and the loss of skilled, experienced men had its effect on output.
The resources of the Royal Dockyards could not meet all the needs of the wartime fleet. Some ships had to be put in to the hands of private firms. This displaced merchant ships, and because of the war there were far more merchant ships than usual in need of repair. It was, therefore, a great relief to Britain's overstretched resources when arrangements were made for ships of the Royal Navy to be repaired in U. S. Navy Yards from late 1940 on.
At the outbreak of war the Navy increased its training capacity by commandeering holiday camps around the coasts. This gave the service sufficient schools to cope with a great increase in numbers and to meet the requirement to teach a variety of new skills such as radar.
The long-established schools suffered in the blitzs. The navigation and signal schools were blown out of their old buildings in Portsmouth dockyard. They took refuge in country houses in the areas behind Portsmouth. The torpedo school suffered, too, and dispersed itself into a number of smaller establishments along the south coasts, one of them the most famous and select of Britain's girls' school.
Sea training raised other difficulties. The Mediterranean was used until the declaration of war by Italy in June, 1940. It then became extremely difficult to find areas in which ships could work-up without undue risk of air or submarine attack.
In general, most fleet units, except carriers, worked-up at Scapa. They could carry out a great deal of sea- training inside the Flow. The carriers and new air groups were trained in the Firth of Clyde, which in addition to its other functions became a university of war.
The Post-War Naval Organization
The Royal Navy had to make drastic economies at the end of World War II, but it did not have to endure such pitiless retrenchment as it had suffered between the wars. The world was too obviously in a dangerously unsettled state, and Britain had many overseas responsibilities, including the thankless Palestine mandate (until 1948). Even when the let down from a war footing was completed, the service was no smaller than it had been in the last years before the war.
Today the British Isles are divided into four geographic naval commands. They are administered by the Commanders-in-Chief at Portsmouth, Plymouth, and Chatham, and by the Flag Officer (Scotland), whose headquarters are near Rosyth. Each of these officers is responsible for both operations and administration within his command. In war they would come under a NATO command structure and would delegate part of their responsibilities to the Flag Officers of subcommands. At present only two sub-commands, Londonderry and Portland, are activated.
The navy is still manned from drafting centers and barracks at the three southern dockyard ports, except for naval air personnel who have their own drafting organization at Lee-on-Solent. The greater part of the shore training establishments are still grouped around the southern dockyards. The most important concentration is in the Portsmouth area.
Nevertheless, a shift of the center of gravity in response to the new European situation is apparent. The wartime base at Londonderry in Northern Ireland has been kept in commission. It is now used as a base for inter-service training in anti-submarine war by both the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. It is fully prepared to be an advanced operational base for escort forces.
The Navy has also taken permanent root in the Firth of Clyde area. An important group of the Reserve Fleet is kept in mothballs in the Gareloch.
The holiday resort of Rothesay has become the headquarters of one of the active submarine squadrons kept in commission in home waters.
On the other side of Scotland there has been an extension of the training establishments near Rosyth. The dockyard there has been kept in service, not reduced to care and maintenance, as it was after 1918.
The ships of the Home Fleet, the principal force in home waters, are attached to one or other of the three southern dockyards for manning. They go to their home ports to give leave and refit; but the fleet itself does not use these ports operationally. Its principal base is Portland, but it spends considerable periods at Invergordon and other Northern anchorages and off the Home Station limits at Gibraltar.
The trend is therefore to set up entirely new establishments away from the south coasts and to keep open operational bases in other parts of the country. The rate of change is extremely slow because the schools as well as the dockyards represent a great deal of locked-up capital, and there are many administrative conveniences in the concentrations around the dockyard ports. Progress compels change however, and the United Kingdom's naval organization has not assumed a permanent form as yet. As long as the organization is required it will respond to external influences. From all indications several new developments in the evolution of the Royal Navy's bases are in the offing.