History of the Royal Navy

The Royal Navy was formally established in 1509, when the King of England was the famous Henry VIII, and the dynasty was Tudor. At that time, it was called the "British Navy", not the "Royal Navy" (Royal Navy). The mainstay of the British Navy was originally made up of pirates.

In 1588, during the reign of Elizabeth I, Spain, unable to tolerate the piratical attacks and plunder of the British navy, sent the world's most powerful "invincible fleet" to crush Britain. The British Navy, led by Drake, fully utilized its advantage of far-reaching guns and flexible ships to achieve a complete victory. The British Navy has since become the world's first-class maritime combat power.

But equally powerful is the Netherlands, France. 17th century, the relationship between Britain and the Netherlands tense up. In the 17th century, the relationship between Britain and the Netherlands was strained, and the Netherlands fought three wars with Britain over the course of a century. In the end, Britain won a hard victory, emptying the pockets of the "sea coachman". In 1660, the restored King Charles II granted England the title of "Royal Navy" in order to win people's hearts. From then on, each ship of the British Navy had the term HMS-His or Her Majesty's ship-meaning His or Her Majesty's Ship. After the "Glorious Revolution" (1688), the relationship between Britain and the Netherlands improved as a result of the marriage of the two royal families and the accession of the Dutch consul William III to the British throne. Now, only France could compete with Britain on the European continent. Britain and France were one of the most famous rivals in human history. The friction between the two sides was constant, and finally the famous Seven Years' War broke out in the 18th century. This bitter war involved all the major European countries, but the real profit was made by Britain. Britain seized a large part of French colonies in America and Asia, and began to become a world empire, the Royal Navy naturally contributed to this. 18th century naval battles, gave birth to a new type of ship, and decided the mode of maritime combat at that time and even in the following nearly 200 years, this is the domination of the sea for hundreds of years, and has become a symbol of the power of naval forces of various countries and even the diplomatic chips of great powers of the Battleships. At that time, the most typical way of combat for both sides of the battleships are lined up in columns, each side of the gun attack each other. This combat method of combat effect is flat, some dare to innovate the navy soldiers began to boldly break through, put forward the column and interspersed with a mixture of warfare, not only can play the traditional method of combat firepower density characteristics, but also can play the warships on both sides of the full power of the artillery. The mastermind of this combat method is the British Royal Navy Mediterranean Fleet Commander Lord Null.

During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, he was one of the main commanders of the Royal Navy. In 1799, the French Navy escorted the Napoleonic Expeditionary Force to Egypt, and then formed an impenetrable iron barrel formation in the Gulf of Aboukir to defend against Nelson's attack. According to conventional warfare, the French fleet was impregnable and unbreakable. But Nelson used an extremely novel method of warfare - he ordered some of the warships directly into the other side of the French naval column after two simultaneous attacks. As a result, the French navy was almost wiped out, and Nelson himself was seriously wounded in the head - he was always at the forefront of every battle, often wounded, and had already lost one of his eyes and one of his arms.In October 1805, Nelson stopped the French-Spanish combined fleet that Napoleon had used to conquer Britain at Cape Trafalgar. He ordered the British fleet to split into two sections and plunge into the French fleet, which had formed the traditional single file line, splitting it into three and then almost completely destroying it. Napoleon's dream of conquering England could never be realized, but Nelson himself was shot and killed. After this battle, the British navy never met or had a decent opponent in the following 100 years. in the middle of the 19th century, Britain had already become the "Sunset Empire", and the naval construction was based on the "double standard", i.e., the national naval power was equal to the second and third strongest naval power in the world combined. The total naval power of the second and third strongest navies in the world. In the late 19th century, Germany became a world power after ending more than a thousand years of division. As the world was basically divided up, Germany was in urgent need of large colonies, so it was in conflict with other powers. Britain, on the other hand, had always followed the policy of "continental balance of power" and therefore suppressed Germany. Germany vigorously developed its navy to challenge Britain's maritime hegemony. Britain's naval power was much stronger than Germany's. When World War I broke out in 1914, the two countries inevitably met each other. The British Royal Navy gave full play to its scale advantage and blockaded the main force of the German Navy in the harbor. As a result, there were only a few large and medium-sized ships in the German Navy on the ocean to harass the British sea transportation line, and all of them were eliminated by the Royal Navy. 1916, the main force of the German Navy took the initiative to attack, trying to break the blockade and seize the right to control the sea. The two sides met in the Jutland Sea, the Royal Navy losses than the German Navy serious, but the German Navy was beaten and fled back, never dare to go to sea. Britain remained firmly in control of the sea. After the end of World War I, the British Empire was greatly wounded, limiting naval armaments of the Washington Treaty signed, the British Navy was caught up with the United States Navy, only as the same as its first maritime power.

In the early 20th century, the British Navy also invented a new type of ship - the aircraft carrier. When the aircraft carrier was first introduced, it was so unassuming that few people expected it to become a major force in just a few decades. 1939 saw the outbreak of the Second World War,

and the Royal Navy embarked on a new journey. The main opponents were Germany, Italy and Japan. The German surface fleet overall strength is weak, only a few large battleships are either sunk by the Royal Navy at sea with absolute superiority, or trapped in the harbor sitting ducks. The German Navy therefore used the submarine as its trump card, and organized the "wolf pack" method of warfare, which had an amazing record. The Royal Navy, together with its allies, carried out joint anti-submarine warfare by sea and air, chasing the "wolf packs" to nowhere to hide, and became a maritime force with great anti-submarine means and experience. The Italian Navy, ranked fifth in the world and far superior to the German Navy, was poorly commanded, poorly trained and demoralized, and was easily defeated by the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean. The British attack on the Italian Navy also pioneered a new method of attacking targets in the harbor with aircraft carriers, hitting many of the Italian Navy's major ships overnight without much cost, and providing a model for Japanese naval commander Yamamoto, who was far to the east, in his sneak attack on the U.S. Pearl Harbor. The Japanese navy fought mainly against the United States, and not so much against the Royal Navy, but the army swept through Southeast Asia and occupied a large part of the British colonies. Later in the war, the Royal Navy returned to the Far East, but at this time the Japanese fleet was already in name only, and it was not worth a fight.

At the end of World War II, the Royal Navy was overtaken by the U.S. Navy and ranked second in the world. The trauma of the war to the United Kingdom has made the United Kingdom unable to maintain such a huge fleet, the British colonial independence wave, the United Kingdom is no longer the "Empire of the Sunset". The British Royal Navy was reduced from a global navy to a regional navy, and in NATO it could only act as a companion to the U.S. Navy. Nevertheless, it is still the second only to the United States of America's strength of the Western maritime power, the strength is not to be underestimated, followed the United States to fight the Korean War, the Gulf War, the Kosovo War, the War on Terrorism and the War in Iraq, with the ally of France fought the war in Suez, and independently fought the war on the island of Malta. The most famous of these wars was the one on the Isle of Man in 1982, in which the Royal Navy traveled halfway across the globe to the Isle of Man, which is close to the South Pole, and dealt a severe blow to the Argentinean army. Although the Royal Navy won the war, it was a costly victory, which made the British government, which was determined to cut down the navy, realize the necessity of continuing to maintain a strong maritime force. In the 1990s, the British government spent huge sums of money to rebuild the Royal Navy so that it would be revitalized around 2035 and restored as a global maritime force. The Royal Navy, which has been around forever, is now full of new hope.

The rise and fall of the British Empire is actually a history of the rise and fall of the British Navy. Britain became the "Sunset Empire", because it has an area equivalent to 140 times the size of the mainland colonies, and therefore has the most extensive raw materials and commodity sales market, the trade volume is unparalleled, the national strength of the natural heyday. In the process of opening up colonies and defending ocean routes, the British navy undoubtedly played the most important role. In order for this role to continue to play, the United Kingdom naturally have to maintain the scale of the sea force, and this sea force, must be the most powerful in the world! After World War II Britain declined. The colonies have been independent, the United Kingdom has been unable to continue to maintain a huge navy, the British Navy followed the decline.

So why was it that the British Navy won a hundred battles and became the dominant naval power? Until World War I, the British army was not strong. And Britain's rivals, France, Germany, are traditional continental countries, for them to maintain a most powerful army is the most important, so it is not possible to spare the full financial resources and have the absolute necessity to maintain an equally powerful navy like Britain. Being constrained by their land forces, their naval power could never surpass that of England, and it was naturally inevitable that they should be defeated by England at sea. As for Holland, although it was once the most powerful maritime nation, it was unable to compete with Britain in terms of comprehensive national strength, and finally failed, and the "Maritime Coachman" has since become a historical term. Spain in the conquest of England, the use of warship warfare has been obsolete, or the same set of medieval naval battles. The British Navy in a series of battles also developed a unique spirit: courageous and bold, proactive, take the enemy must fight, the method of warfare innovation ...... these spirits are still firmly branded in the British Navy in the mind of every officer and soldier.