48 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's nickname is said to have named the drink, and grog in turn gave English the word groggy; the watering-down began in his own squadron in the West Indies.

What do sailors call 31 July 1970, when the Royal Navy issued its last rum ration?

Black Tot Day followed an Admiralty Board ruling that rum no longer suited crews working complex, delicate machinery; some sailors wore black armbands and one training base staged a mock funeral with a coffin.

Which nickname for Britons comes from what the Royal Navy issued to its sailors to ward off scurvy?

Limey began as the jeer 'lime-juicer', and it stuck even though the navy's switch from lemons to colonial limes, which hold much less vitamin C, let scurvy creep back.

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!'.

Legend says rum, but Nelson's body was actually carried home from Trafalgar preserved in a cask of what?

Brandy, mixed with camphor and myrrh, did the pickling, and at Gibraltar the body was moved to a lead-lined coffin filled with spirits of wine; the rum tale survives in the nickname 'Nelson's blood'.

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 on the river by the People's Liberation Army from April until she slipped her chain and dashed downriver in the dark on 30 July 1949; Simon kept the rats off the dwindling food.

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 the cash raised aboard ship by selling fat scraped from the cooking pots?

Slush fund comes from 'slush', the refuse fat of a ship's galley, which was sold ashore; the takings were kept apart from the ship's accounts, and the phrase later passed into politics.

Which 'Sailor King', at sea from age thirteen, is credited with letting Royal Navy officers drink the loyal toast sitting down?

William IV is said to have learned about low deckheads the hard way as a young officer, so the seated toast spared his navy the same knocks, and the Royal Canadian Navy keeps the custom too.

At Trafalgar Night dinners each 21 October, Royal Navy officers raise which toast to Nelson?

The Immortal Memory is proposed by the guest of honour at the end of a speech; in Washington in 2016 the First Sea Lord asked the diners to stand and drink it in silence, without response.

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

Henry VIII's board gave the navy a permanent administration to match the standing fleet he had built; before his reign a single Clerk of the King's Ships had looked after the royal vessels.

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

Deptford then kept the Golden Hind on public show by royal command until the ship's timbers rotted away in the following century.

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 came to the navy in 1660 as Clerk of the Acts with no maritime experience, yet his reforms began its professionalisation, and a lieutenant's seniority dated from the day he passed.

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 and strand Bonaparte's army in the East?

The Battle of the Nile handed Britain the Mediterranean for years, and Nelson was made a baron for it, though privately he thought the reward too small.

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 in the crypt of which London church, in a 16th-century sarcophagus first made for Cardinal Wolsey?

St Paul's Cathedral placed Nelson in a sarcophagus carved for Cardinal Wolsey, later taken over for a royal tomb that was never finished, so it stood empty for almost three centuries.

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 now rests in dry dock at Portsmouth, but at which royal dockyard was her keel laid in 1759?

Chatham floated her out in 1765, six years after the keel went down, using timber from some 6,000 trees, about 90 per cent of it oak; since 2012 she has been flagship of the First Sea Lord.

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

Next two navies combined was the two-power standard, and it bought ten battleships and dozens of cruisers for an extra £20 million, yet it probably spurred rivals to build rather than deterring them.

The 1909 cry "We want eight and we won't wait" demanded more battleships to stay ahead of which country?

Germany's building caused the panic, and the slogan, coined by a Conservative MP, carried the day: Asquith agreed to start four ships at once and four more if they were needed.

What motto did Admiral 'Jacky' Fisher 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 Mediterranean Fleet admiral said a new tradition takes 300 years while evacuating the army from Crete in 1941?

Andrew Cunningham, 'ABC' to the fleet, said in full 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.

The 1937 "Inskip Award" took the Fleet Air Arm away from which service?

The Royal Air Force had formed the Fleet Air Arm within its own ranks in 1924 and ran it until the Admiralty took control in May 1939, only months before war broke out.

Which carrier feature from Lieutenant Commander Douglas Taylor's 1973 thesis let loaded Harriers take off from short decks?

Ski-jump ramps fling a rolling Harrier upward so it can leave a short deck with a heavier load; HMS Invincible was the first major ship fitted with one, set at a cautious seven degrees.

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, so big that on first leaving Rosyth she had to wait for low tide to slip under the Forth bridges.

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

Barrow-in-Furness builds all seven of the class, and the first, HMS Astute, made headlines during her 2010 sea trials by running aground off Skye.

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

Gosport's Royal Navy Submarine Museum shows her because she sank in 1913 while being towed to the scrapyard and lay on the seabed until she was found and raised in the early 1980s.

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 West Country naval base, nicknamed 'Guzz' by sailors, is the largest in Western Europe?

Devonport, in Plymouth, is one of the navy's three operating bases and the only one equipped to repair and refuel nuclear submarines, so every boat in the fleet comes there for refit.

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?

The Senior Service label follows from the navy's claim to the English Navy of the early Tudors, a permanent fleet that existed generations before England kept a standing army.

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; from 1661 boys who hoped to become officers were sent aboard by their families with a 'letter of service' from the crown.

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 has gone to no serving officer since 1995, when routine appointments ended because the armed forces had shrunk; as of 2026 the only two since, in 2012 and 2014, were honorary.

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 issue of rum may now come only from royalty or the Admiralty Board?

Splice the mainbrace began as the reward after one of the hardest repair 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.

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 Royal Navy survey ship carried a young naturalist around the world in the 1830s, shaping his theory of evolution?

HMS Beagle's naturalist was Charles Darwin, and her captain, Robert FitzRoy, went on to found the Met Office and pioneer the weather forecast.

Which future king, as Lord High Admiral, gave his title to the 1664 regiment that became the Royal Marines?

James II was then Duke of York and Albany, and his Maritime Regiment of Foot was raised on 28 October 1664, the birthday the Royal Marines still keep.

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, capped by a 30-mile march across open moorland that recruits must finish in eight hours in full fighting order.

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, yet the Irish-sounding name was adopted: he was born Richard Patrick Russ, an Englishman.