History of the Royal Navy - Steam, steel and Dreadnoughts (1806-1918)

with few exceptions the 19th century will be a time of unchallenged mastery for the royal navy the napoleonic wars had ended and the british empire will enjoy a period of peace expansion and stunning economic supremacy technological innovations will yield numerous breakthroughs in ship building challenging the future of the royal navy's great wooden walls prince albert is reputed to have asked the admiralty what have we got to meet this new engine of war when england's old nemesis france introduced an ironclad ship and sent shockwaves across the channel the royal navy's response will eventually arrive in the form of the largest fastest and most powerful battleship the world has ever seen october 1805 aboard his flagship hms victory admiral horatio nelson leads the royal navy in a desperate battle against napoleon's sleep off the cape of trafalgar within hours nelson's victory is complete 19 of the enemy's 33 vessels are either destroyed or captured though the land wars with napoleon's army will go on trafalgar is the most stunning triumph in the history of the royal navy other skirmishes would challenge great britain's command of the seas to the english the war of 1812 with the united states was but a sidebar to the continuing conflict in europe the victories of american frigates like the constitution over british warships though wildly celebrated in the united states to a global naval power like great britain they were considered minor setbacks the fact of the matter was that the ships sent out to the america station were largely underarmed the american frigates were cut down line of battleships much more powerfully armed bigger bigger crews and of course had familiarity of their own local station it was very difficult to get their lordships to take seriously the america station it didn't affect vital english interests which of course were focused on the continent by 1814 the war with the united states was over less than a year later the napoleonic wars had finally ended 1815 found england with a huge empire it dominated the sea lanes geographically wherever you looked south africa north america south america and the falklands the mediterranean aidan and the far east none of these places lacked a british maritime presence but at the same time the line of battleships reduced the concentration was on cruising ships lighter ships able to look after themselves but able to enforce a presence around the world but the decades-long struggle with france left great britain nearly bankrupt to save money most of the royal navy's great ships of the line were returned to port and within a few years the number of its personnel were reduced by over 80 percent seamen were put out of work in droves officers laid off on half pay and many young men who'd expected glittering careers and the riches of prize money and all the rest of it were to be sadly disappointed from the sociological point of view for britain it became an era of enormous political and social change with a growing economy fueled by increased production of domestic goods england's exports rose rapidly this in turn led to profound changes in her shipping industry and the role of the royal navy overseas trade obviously went in ships and those ships were protected by the navy the merchant fleet made the money and provided the seamen which made the navy possible the navy provided the protection which made the merchant fleet possible it was a symbiotic relationship and the whole of national prosperity was therefore bound up with the sea all of this began during the 19th century's industrial revolution in england which saw enormous technical advances that would transform the world and with it the world ships the development of shipping in this period is extremely interesting it is the crucial turning point between as it were the traditional age of sail and the world of modern technology and rapid technological and scientific advance of all the developments during the mid-19th century the most revolutionary was steam power even with the introduction of the new steam technology most people were suspicious of the fact that the thing might run out of coal it might have mechanical breakdown so therefore people were very reluctant to ditch the masts and spas and indeed a warship didn't appear until the 1830s and even then it was a paddle warship and the navy was very very suspicious of this because they thought that one well-timed well-aimed shot that hit the paddles would completely take out the propulsion system of that ship though the royal navy was slow to commit to the new technology it was even slower to invest in it the royal navy was very good at spotting new ideas coming through and it was also quite ruthless in making sure the private sector carried out all the fundamental design and development work with the screw propeller in the 1840s they managed to make the private sector carry all the development cost almost all of the trials expenses and make the thing from a very good idea into a sound practical proposition ready to be used before the navy then stepped in and began to spend money one of those from the private sector was a brilliant and ambitious young engineer from portsmouth edinburgh kingdom brunel was the greatest engineer of the 19th century and he had a hand in almost every great engineering project of the age the admiralty hired him to oversee the technical introduction of the screw propeller in the early 1840s and brunel was pleased to do this not because he was a patriot but because he had a big iron screw-propelled merchant vessel of his own which he was building in 1843 brunel built the great britain the first large vessel driven by a screw propeller but that wasn't the only innovation displayed in this remarkable ship all sorts of developments were taking place in shipping the introduction of the iron hull with brunel's great britain there were developments in armaments the flat trajectory breach loading shell firing gun the concept that this iron material could provide you with armor plates began to interest people still these innovations were only slowly considered by a naval command which was reluctant to alter the great wooden warships that had served britain so well for centuries but across the channel the french launched an ominous looking iron-plated man of war driven by a screw propeller her name expressed the french navy's hope for future glory aguar a political situation between britain and france had drifted back to its customary rivalry by this period and the announcement that the french navy possessed an ironclad warship caused great alarm in london this formidable vessel was 256 feet long displaced over 5600 tons and was capable of reaching a top speed of 13 knots with her naval dominance now seriously threatened the royal navy was forced to come up with a response to the new french super ship if they failed england's wooden walls could be fighting their last battle in 1861 in response to france's iron-clad man of war laguar the royal navy launched hms warrior warrior reflects the urgency with which the british wanted to get something into the field against laguar this was the victorian equivalent of an arms race if you've got something we've got to have it to counter it there's a wonderful old black myth that the royal navy was conservative and opposed progress and didn't want to change but this simply isn't true the royal navy grasped technology and exploited it to the fullest extent the warrior did much more than simply counter her french rival she surpassed her in every respect dwara is a wooden hulled ironclad and she is essentially a conventional wooden ship with iron armor bolted on warrior by contrast is an iron ship in which the iron armor is bolted onto an iron structure so the difference is not in the armor the cladding but it's in the actual structure of the hull developed by the navy's chief constructor isaac watts warriors showed the world that the royal navy was still determined to dominate the seas at 420 feet in length and displacing over 9 200 tons she was designed to carry a crew of over 700 men and despite her size she was fast thanks to a huge trunk configuration steam engine powering a screw propeller the pistons are carried on trunks which go right the way through the cylinder out the other side this is the old-fashioned system from 1845 it was a paddle steamer engine but it was such a good engine that the naval constructors bought it in for their ships because it was powerful and compact and at 56 rpm it gave 5400 horsepower gave the ship 14 and a half knots which made it the fastest warship on the water of the day but this cost you 10 tons of coal an hour so that wasn't done very often to save fuel on the long voyages the warrior carried some forty eight thousand square feet of sales this also provided for an extra burst of speed in emergencies if the ship has sails up as well as the engines going using the two together she is capable of 17 knots which you're talking of over 20 miles per hour warrior's punch was supplied by an array of heavy duty weaponry 26 muzzle loading guns that fired 68 pounds shot as well as 10 breach loading 110 pounders arranged much like the earlier ships of the line such as victory these guns were also carried broadside the gun deck itself would have been recognizable to any sailor in nelson's navy the only difference was that there was far fewer cannons on the warrior victory has 104 guns firing broadside this ship has only got 43 firing broadside but all the guns are very much bigger than victories so if one were to add up the weight of shot in a broadside from warrior it's very similar to the weight of a broadside from victory the warrior also carried hundreds of small arms for the crew there's about 360 british enfield rifles and about 70 roy naval cult pistols the reason that there is so much small arms around the ship is that the victorian navy was used not so much in large battles in fact there were no large battles at the time it was used much more to go and sort out the slave trade and sort out the drug trade in china so this would require sending small parties of armed men ashore but perhaps the most revolutionary feature of this extraordinary ship was the warrior's armored box or citadel designed to protect her vital armament and machinery the citadel i'm standing in at the moment it's the center 200 feet of the ship and it's where most of the guns are the side of the ship in the citadel area is made up of four and a half inches of wrought iron plate on the outside capable of keeping out any shot that could be fired at it by the guns of the time of 1860 behind the iron armor is 18 inches of teak arranged in two layers with grains in opposite direction all this the teak and the outer armor is bolted to 7 8 of an inch plate which is then riveted onto the frame addition the warrior possessed the world's first true bridge raised structures from which the vessel could be commanded and navigated during combat the captain would direct the firing from an armored conning tower on the deck below in here he would be protected from most of the enemy fire and therefore could direct operations by shouting his orders down a voice pipe onto the deck below within the armored citadel where most of the crew would be manning the guns manning the engines steering the ship ironically during her decade of active service between 1861 and 1871 this commanding vessel never once fired a shot in anger the warriors place in royal naval history is that she marked the end of the wooden navy the famous wooden walls of england that defended this country against invasion for 300 years right from the time of henry viii suddenly this ship is built built of iron heavily armored and that's the end of the wooden navy in the quest for naval dominance iron warships were soon being built everywhere including the united states where the inventor of the screw propeller was once again making a name for himself he did it by building a vessel that would force the world and the royal navy to radically alter the way they built their warships march 18 1862 during america's civil war two iron-clad warships the monitor and the confederate ship virginia pound each other for hours off hampton roads virginia although the battle is inconclusive it demonstrates to the world the important advantages of one of the monitor's revolutionary features the revolving turret designed by screw propeller innovator john erickson the turret enables a 360 degree field of fire for its two 11-inch guns soon naval architects begin to realize that ponderous vessels like the warrior limited to firing only broadsides will be simply obsolete broadside iron clads were replaced by center battery iron clads with heavier guns in smaller numbers in the middle of the ship with much heavier protection which were then supplemented by turret iron clads with guns and rotating turrets in 1866 the royal navy commissioned its first turret ship hms captain which still relied on auxiliary sales but in the next two decades naval technology and gunnery advanced by leaps and bounds the leader of the gunnery revolution in the royal navy was admiral sir percy scott whose innovations included a system of centralized fire control whereby all of a ship's guns were aimed and fired from a single director center aloft in a ship's main list previously all guns were fired independently during this period new ships were built with a wide variety of designs and mechanical innovations but no one was quite sure which of the features of these bizarre looking vessels were actually useful part of the problem was that britain had established a global empire and the royal navy was successfully enforcing a long period of general worldwide naval peace often called the pox britannica as a result there was no way that any of these new features could be proven or disproven by combat experience between 1860 and about 1890 you have a whole set of ships of different designs some with sales some without sales some with guns on the broadside some with guns in different forms of mounting what you had were a range of vessels some of which were better for certain deployments some of which were better for other deployments because at this time nobody had the first idea what the optimal type and layout of a warship once in 1871 the same year hms warrior ended her service as a first-line warship the royal navy introduced its first mastless iron-hulled ship hms devastation she marked a significant turning point in modern warship design from the introduction of ships like devastation the major capital ships of the royal navy begin to look like the vessels you and i think of as a classic battleship she had huge muzzle loading guns about 12 inch caliber and she was a potent symbol of things to come and was rapidly followed by the neighbours of other nations in addition to focusing on improving a warship's armor and firepower naval engineers began trying to refine the steam engine to advance its reliability in the late 1800s the development of the turbine proved to be one solution the turbine is a much higher powered and much more reliable and durable engine capable of generating very high power for long periods of time without serious damage to the machinery reciprocating engines basically shook themselves to pieces as they were running and if you spent a day at sea running quickly you'd spend a week in harbor repairing the engine still the royal navy was reluctant to embrace the turbine until a british inventor an engineer named charles parsons found a unique way to demonstrate the advantages of this new technology a fleet review at the end of the 19th century sir charles parsons dashed through the fleet in his private turbine driven steam yacht the turbinia and proved conclusively that the turbine was faster and this brought admiralty thinking round to the turbine he was chased by the latest mark of destroyers which failed to catch up with him and at 33 knots he streaked through the lines of anchored warships with innovations like these the royal navy was once again leading the world in warship design but it was also during this period that a far less visible but no less important leadership role was recognized in navigation in october 1884 the international meridian conference was held in washington dc to finally select a location for the earth's prime meridian essentially the longitudinal equivalent of the equator by a vote of 22-1 england's meridian at greenwich was awarded this designation which would also determine the world's time zones there were several compelling reasons why greenwich was selected but the most important were reliability and practicality it came down to who produced the charts and the chance of the time that were of the greatest accuracy uh and were therefore in most demand turned out in the end to be those from britain and if you look through other nations charts you'll find that they all drew them with their own prime meridian in the middle no surprise but britain's charts were more widely available in the end and more respected and the prime meridian greenwich arose through that understanding that if you navigated far from these shores you took with you a british chart in almost all cases as the 19th century was drawing to a close the world's political landscape was beginning to change as well and new challenges were on the horizon for the royal navy to remain the ruler of the world's oceans even greater reforms would be needed they would be proposed by an iconoclastic admiral who was destined to completely revolutionize the royal navy he did it by championing an innovative new generation of warships one of these would dominate the surface of the oceans with massive broadsides another would terrorize the world's seeds from beneath the waves in the latter part of the 19th century there was growing uneasiness in the british admiralty many of their battleships while serviceable were becoming outdated in addition other potential rivals were beginning to catch up with great britain economically and were lavishing huge amounts on expanding their militaries including their navies britain's industrial advantage and technical superiority was rapidly being overhauled by other countries notably france germany and the united states and certainly it was clear to people that commercial and financial superiority was no substitute for industrial and technological muscle for these reasons the naval defense act of 1889 was passed the legislation called for a two power standard essentially meaning that the royal navy should be larger than the world's next two largest navies combined yet nothing would have a greater impact on the royal navy in the coming years than an ambitious and headstrong seaman who was then rising through its top command this man was john or both not fisher better known as jackie fisher he had joined the navy as a 12 year old midshipman but he lacked the social connections which often ensured advancement through its ranks nonetheless fisher's talent and drive were relentless and by 1894 admiral fischer was knighted and ten years later named first sealord the royal navy's highest military post he had once embarked on a complete overhaul of a system that had been in his mind stagnant for far too long i think the reason why we can admire jackie fisher in the modern navy is here is a man who stood against the tide of opinion at the time and managed to impose his will on a whole generation and make sure that the royal navy was ready to face the challenges of world war one by the time fisher became first sea lord germany had passed several naval bills of its own to expand its fleet among its new vessels was an ominous yet relatively untested weapon of war the weapon of the week of power as it was known the submarine posed a direct threat to what we call command of the seas that's the ability to go where you want the nation with the most to lose by the successful development of the submarine was in fact great britain she relied on absolute free trade and the protection of those routes all across the world to reach her empire into commonwealth while early submarines had been used with minimum success during the american revolutionary war and the civil war they'd been primitive at best however the viability of the submarine as a warship improved greatly through the talents of an irish-american inventor john phillip holland in 1901 the royal navy bought five holland-class submarines one of these vessels the h-1 is now housed in the royal navy submarine museum at gosport in historic portsmouth each of the craft was approximately 64 feet in length and displaced over 100 tons they were capable of cruising 500 miles and attaining speeds of 8 knots surfaced and five knots submerged it wasn't long before jackie fisher saw the potential for the new vessels now fischer when he was commander-in-chief of mediterranean which was probably the most powerful of all the sea going fleets in 1904 wrote a letter to the then firstly lord and said it's astounding to me perfectly astounding how the very best amongst us failed to realize the impending revolution that the submarine is going to bring to naval warfare and naval strategy while championing the submarine sir jackie was also adamant that great britain prepare for any potential challenge to its surface fleet the culmination of his ideas arrived in the form of another cutting-edge british warship launched on february 10 1906 at portsmouth hms dreadnought was great britain's attempt to ensure its naval supremacy at a single stroke dreadnought was the world's largest and fastest battleship capable of reaching speeds of 21 knots but its most obvious advantage over all earlier battleships was its armament previous battleships had had a maximum of two turrets bearing two guns each hms dreadnought had ten guns in five turrets and totally revolutionized naval warfare our massive turrets weighed 500 tons apiece and her guns could unleash a broadside of 850 pound shells over 10 miles soon all the other world's naval powers were building their own versions of the dreadnought the dreadnought as a concept is inevitable and the japanese the americans and the russians have all seen it it's just the fisher who's the most dynamic figure of the age grabs the opportunity and runs away with it gets a ship built in a year and a day and he has one ready at sea before anybody else has got down to starting one and the name dreadnought not only became the name for all succeeding battleships of that type but it also became a brand name it became a badge of identity it became one of those words that meant more than just the name of a ship in addition to her powerful guns the dreadnought was the first major warship to replace the old and inefficient reciprocating steam engine with modern steam turbines her total of eight turbines generated a force of 23 000 horsepower the dreadnought made a profound impression in germany where kaiser wilhelm ii and his minister of marine admiral alfred von turpitz had been monitoring britain's naval production while stepping up theirs on march 7th 1908 germany launched its version of dreadnought the battleship nassau while slightly smaller and less powerful than dreadnought nassau was still a well-built ship with formidable armor protection kaiser velham came to the throne convinced that he had to take germany on his grandfather had made germany a nation and it was his destiny to make it a world empire he was a great admirer of the royal navy he was after all queen victoria's grandson and had grown up looking at the royal navy as an example of an outstanding world force and he ultimately wished to emulate and replace the royal navy with his own fleet like fisher wilhelm had been heavily impressed by a book called the influence of sea power on history written by an american naval scholar if there was one single prophet of sea power then it has to be the american alfred thayer mahan who wrote books which had an enormous um recognition at the time as demonstrating the utility of sea power he distilled the naval history of the classical period of sea power into a particularly accessible form he was a strong supporter of the battle fleet therefore he provided an ideology for those political decision makers in all countries in most major powers who wanted to build battleships it was apparent to jackie fisher that kaiser wilhelm intended for germany to become just such a power to stay ahead of germany and everyone else fisher saw to it that england built improved versions of the dreadnought he also initiated a new class of fighting missile the battle cruiser battle cruisers had comparable firepower to dreadnought-class battleships but were faster however the extra speed was gained by sheathing the battle cruisers with lighter armor it was a decision that would prove to be fateful by 1910 germany and great britain were locked in a naval arms race the likes of which the world had never seen new classes of dreadnoughts were built on either side with dizzying speed each one bigger faster and more expensive than the last the culmination of this struggle would be the greatest clash of battleships in history by 1916 world war one had been raging across europe for nearly two years yet even though the empires of great britain and germany had established their place at the head of the warring alliances the two nations had yet to square off at sea under its commander admiral sir john jelico the british grand fleet had instituted a strangling naval blockade of germany and with few exceptions admiral reinhardt shearer's german high-seas fleet had remained in port for the first two years of the first world war jelico in command of the british grand fleet and shir in command of the german high seas fleet had tried to sort out how they were going to deal with each other in a major fleet action there have been a number of isolated incidents where pockets of both fleets have found each other and they have been sort of skirmish and ships have been lost and the germans have been generally worsted in most of the actions while british and german naval leaders waited for their chance to prove themselves in a major battle the other new naval weapon the submarine was demonstrating its potential as an instrument of war the only really powerful tool the germans had available to them was their submarine service now they started the war imagining that their submarines would be used to soften up the british ground fleet and elements of their high seas fleet would then be able to pick off bit by bit the british then of course they began to look at the concept of geared of course get of course means attacking your enemy's merchant ships the german u-boat campaign against british merchant ships was an immediate and devastating success threatening to sever the maritime lifeline upon which the island nation of great britain had always defended for its very survival but british submarines achieved some notable accomplishments of their own one of their chief theaters of operations was the baltic sea and among their most daring commanders was a man named max horton horton should have become the senior submariner in the baltic but the current commander-in-chief thought he was too much of a pirate he was the first royal navy submariner never to sink an enemy ship max horton became the leading ace in the british submarine force he survived the war and ironically was destined to achieve even greater accomplishments in the next war not as a submariner but as a hunter of submarines meanwhile as the war ground on the epic clash of dreadnoughts that many had so eagerly anticipated was about to take place the chain of events that led to the battle began in may of 1916 when german admiral scheer left port for the north sea shear was hoping to trap a squadron of royal navy dreadnought battle cruisers and battleships under the command of vice admiral sir david beatty beatty's squadron had left its anchorage earlier in an effort to ambush a squadron of german battle cruisers under the command of rear admiral france von hipper and the idea was once bt responded shia would then come out with the full way to the german high seas fleet and close the trap he also stationed submarines off the major fleet bases of the british in case the grand fleet came out in strength unfortunately for the germans british intelligence had detected the increased submarine deployments and consequently had sailed three days earlier now british admiral sir john jellicle was at sea with all 27 of his dreadnoughts hoping to catch shear in a trap of his own the personalities of the opposing commanders would play a crucial role in the battle that lay ahead the high command is an interesting study in contrasting kinds of professionalism jelico is the arch centralizer the arch materialist he understands how everything works and he's ensuring that everything works as best it possibly can he won't take risks because he knows the consequences of defeat and he's more concerned not to lose perhaps than he is to take risks to win admiral scheer i think is one of the most underrated commanders of the 20th century he comes over as an officer of enormous aggression willing to use what he has knowing it's inferior in many ways to gain maximum strategic effect on may 31 1916 off a danish peninsula known as jutland shears battle fleet of 16 dreadnoughts and six older battleships steamed through the north sea to join the five swift battle cruisers in hippers squadron in late afternoon hipper and beatty's battle cruisers spot each other within minutes a highly accurate 12-inch guns of the german battlecruisers are shredding the queen mary suddenly over one thousand men are lost when beede's indefatigables magazines explode we now know that his battle cruisers blew up at jutland not because they were badly armored but because their ammunition was being handled badly soon beedy receives a message informing him that shear's main fleet has been sighted knowing that jalico's dreadnoughts are now only a few miles away beedy turns his battered squadron away from the enemy when bt made contact with the german fleet and bt turned away and was pursued by hippa's battle cruisers the cavalry came up in the form of shi's battleships only to find that jelico's grand fleet was waiting for them jelico of course knew he could lose or win the war in an afternoon because had he lost the grand fleet britain would have been effectively out of the war but jelico is still determined to win a smashing victory over the germans and orders his fleet to deploy in a column directly ahead and perpendicular to shear by crossing the enemy's tee he will bring all of his dreadnought's broadsides to bear on the column of german battleships 6 30 pm with shear's fleet now in range angelico gives the order to fire the seven mile long battle line of the british grand fleet unleashes the most powerful salvo in the history of naval warfare though outnumbered and under fire german guns capitalize on more british safety mistakes this time on the battlecruiser invincible what they were doing was putting a large number of cordite charges in the bar bet that's the lower part of the turret and the turret itself in anticipation of having to fire a lot of rounds now this was contrary to all the safety regulations at the time whereby you would bring one cartridge one shell at a time through the flash doors and it was designed to prevent explosions in the turret sheer success is fleeting and under heavy fire he promptly orders his fleet to reverse course jelico decides not to pursue part of the reason for his caution in pursuing sheer into the night was he was afraid of mines and submarines waiting for him and who's to say that jelico was wrong but some saw his over cautiousness as part of a larger problem a general stifling of initiative among royal navy commanders the result of decades of inaction during the parks britannica and this conflicts so much with nelsonian theory indeed somebody who was an opponent of nelson in 1797 remarked on the facility with which british captains entered battle he said they're there to do harm to the enemy they're there to protect their friends and they're allowed to use their initiative that is the difference between the british and us and somewhere between 1797 and 1916 the british had lost that or suppressed it now only a few minutes after shear had turned away from the grand fleet he suddenly does an about face and heads back towards jelico shear would later comment that in his aggressive manner he wanted one more shot at the enemy again the british dreadnoughts rained fire on the germans quickly seeing that his situation is hopeless sheer flashes a signal to his four remaining battle cruisers to charge the enemy this death ride buys sheer time to maneuver his flotilla to fire one last torpedo attack before escaping into the deepening twilight in the confused night action that follows the german fleet somehow manages to slip through the british warships and returned to port heavily damaged but safe the germans came out they engaged the british in the afternoon they ran away three times and the next morning they thought they were very lucky that most of them had got home though jelica was heavily criticized at the time and afterwards for not destroying the high seas fleet the germans never sought another major battle for the remainder of the war the british won the battle of jutland comprehensively but critical to all of that in the aftermath of jutland is the german decision for unrestricted submarine warfare the decision which brings america into the war ensures that in the long term the western allies must win when america entered the war in 1917 a highly successful attempt was made to counter the u-boat menace by deploying a system of convoys at the same time the british surface fleet's blockade of germany was staggeringly effective starved of food and supplies germany eventually collapsed although it had not decisively beaten the german fleet at sea the royal navy had been a key factor in bringing the german nation to its knees but more important for england the royal navy did not lose we have a naval tradition in this country which most countries would give their right arm for and we still like to think that we are the benchmark by which we set naval standards and in a sense one thinks back at all these glorious traditions all this history and you say i am now part of that and if you are part of that you sign up to the standards you send up the principles and you sign up to the fact that we don't lose we will not be defeated in our island home we will maintain our values and as long as we've got life and fight and spirit in us we will do it while the impetus for the royal navy's expansion in 1858 was largely because of a perceived threat from france its ultimate showdown would come more than half a century later in world war one but by the 1930s in the aftermath of this titanic struggle the royal navy would be gravely handicapped and facing unprecedented challenges to defend its nation and its reputation again in another world war you

Channel: Ryan Doyle

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Keywords: Royal Navy (Armed Force), History, HMS Hood, Bismarck, Churchill, Falklands, 1982, 1806, WWII, 1906, Dreadnought, Naval, Arms race, Documentary, Ocean, Cruise, World, Falkland Islands (Country), Sailing, Boat, Germany, Marine, Ww2, Boats, Marine (military), Water, Royal Marines, Prince Andrew, Duke of York

Id: ZW4WdrDg3Bo

Length: 43min 30sec (2610 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 01 2013