Royal Naval Research Articles

The life and times of Francis Geach MD, FRS (1730–1798), Senior Surgeon to the Royal Naval Hospital, Plymouth (1778–1798)

Francis Geach MD, FRS was surgeon to the Royal Naval Hospital, Plymouth from about 1765 until he died in 1798. The son of a sail maker, he was born and raised in Plymouth. He was apprenticed to a surgeon in 1745 and probably undertook some medical training in London but he spent his professional career in Plymouth as a naval surgeon and in private practice. Geach had a particular interest in trauma and skin disease and was highly respected as a diagnostic physician, notably of inflammatory disorders, but he also had an interest in local issues including the cause of Devonshire colic. He was noted for the recognition of the skin disease of Francis Beaufort, later Admiral Sir Francis, as Greek leprosy (psoriasis) and for the recognition and support he gave to Sir William Knighton, physician and private secretary to the Prince Regent, later George IV. This article summarises Francis Geach's genealogy, medical and academic practice, his breadth of interests and his contribution to Devonshire life in the 18th century.

Robert Marius Foster

After junior posts, Robert Marius Foster (“Roy”) spent two years in national service in the Royal Navy and then the Royal Naval Reserves as surgeon lieutenant and then surgeon lieutenant...

Fruit and vegetable intake in Royal Naval Personnel: Effects of deployment at sea and associations with body composition and net endogenous acid production

Fruit and vegetable intake in Royal Naval Personnel: Effects of deployment at sea and associations with body composition and net endogenous acid production

Gordon Wood Bisset

At the age of 19, while working as a junior civil servant in Whitehall, Gordon Wood Bisset volunteered for the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and saw active service as lieutenant...

The Royal Naval Medical Services: delivering medical operational capability. The ‘black art’ of Medical Operational Planning

This article looks to dispel the mysteries of the 'black art' of Medical Operational Planning whilst giving an overview of activity within the Medical Operational Capability area of Medical Division (Med Div) within Navy Command Headquarters (NCHQ) during a period when the Royal Naval Medical Services (RNMS) have been preparing and reconfiguring medical capability for the future contingent battle spaces. The rolling exercise program has been used to illustrate the ongoing preparations taken by the Medical Operational Capability (Med Op Cap) and the Medical Force Elements to deliver medical capability in the littoral and maritime environments.

The Royal Dockyard Schools and their Education System

This note follows from my account of the ‘Paucity of Shipwrights in Royal Naval Dockyards during the Second World War Early in the 1840s’ in Mariner's Mirror 99(2), 228-33.Early in the 1840s, the A...

Paucity of Shipwrights in Royal Naval Dockyards during the Second World War

In March 1942 Stephen Payne, the manager of the construction department, HM Dockyard Devonport, in a memorandum to his Admiral Superintendent, with distribution to the super–intendents of the other...

Athol Noble Hepburn

Athol Hepburn was born and educated in Aberdeen. After house appointments he joined the Royal Navy for a short service commission. After two years at sea, including the Gulf and...

Finding a Teacher of Navigation Abroad in Eighteenth-Century Venice: A Study of the Circulation of Useful Knowledge

INTRODUCTIONThis paper explores an example of the deliberate circulation of useful knowledge by the state in the second half of the eighteenth century: the location and employment of an English teacher of navigation by the Venetian government. Arthur Edgcombe, a former Royal Naval officer who ran a private navigational school in Portsmouth, was head-hunted by an agent of the Republic in 1766 to serve as master of the Scuola Nautica: a school established to train Venetian merchant seamen, aged fourteen to sixteen, in the theory and practice of navigation. His acceptance of employment and transfer to Venice inaugurated a period of English influence at the school that lasted until the fall of the Republic in 1797, by the end of which he and his son Thomas, who succeeded him as master, had taught several hundred Venetian subjects. The excellent results of the nautical school - in large part due to its two English masters - mark it out as one of the most successful of a number of commercial and maritime reforms in eighteenth-century Venice.1Situating this case study within the context of the broader scientific and industrial diffusion of knowledge in the late Enlightenment, this paper will argue that it allows us a privileged glimpse of how the 'knowledge economy' operated in practice, thanks to the unusually rich traces left by Edgcombe in the Venetian state archives. Venice's search for a teacher of navigation highlights the crucial role that the state and its agents often played in the international circulation of technology and scientific practices and reveals the social embeddedness of that knowledge. What did it mean for a state such as Venice to acquire useful knowledge in the eighteenth century? In this case it meant primarily negotiating the international labour market and attracting a skilled worker: the embodiment of knowledge and know-how. The communication of that knowledge and its 'localisation' in Venice was a process equally rooted in socio-cultural relations whose success depended on a degree of local adaptation and mediation.This paper therefore adds a contribution to the ongoing debates amongst historians of science, technology and the economy about how and why knowledge moves across borders. The question 'How does knowledge circulate?' has the potential to unite the efforts of historians of science, argues James Secord, when scientific knowledge is understood to be a form of communication.2 Within economic history, the work of Joel Mokyr has in recent years highlighted the epistemological foundations of economic growth and argued for the crucial role played by the interface of science and technology.3 Institutions that favoured the free circulation and communication of certain types of knowledge and practices are held to have been integral to what he terms the 'Industrial Enlightenment' . In the process Mokyr has left us with the concept of 'useful knowledge' - knowledge of the material world which incorporates both propositional and prescriptive knowledge, i.e. science and technology. As a more holistic attempt at conceptualising knowledge production, useful knowledge can perhaps go some way towards re-integrating our historically- and culturallyloaded distinctions between science and technology or between men of science and craftsmen in our analyses.4Contemporaries in the eighteenth century had their own schemas for conceptualising the 'art of navigation' and frequently subdivided it into 'theory' and 'practice' or 'scienza' and 'arte' (craft) as Thomas Edgcombe explained in Venice.5 Pupils at the Royal Naval Academy, Portsmouth in the 1770s, for example, were taught that navigation may be divided into two parts, namely mechanical and theoretical. Mechanical or working navigation, comprehends the art or working of a ship ... Theoretical navigation or the art of piloting concerns those methods whereby the navigator or pilot discovers on what tack the ship must steer so as to arrive safely at the intended place. …

British Reaction to American Civil War Ironclads

By the 1840’s the era of the wooden ship of the line was coming to a close. As early as the 1820’s and 1830’s, ships of war were outfitted with increasingly heavy guns. Naval guns such as the increasingly popular 68 pounder could quickly damage the best wooden hulled ships of the line. Yet, by the 1840’s, explosive shells were in use by the British, French, and Imperial Russian navies. It was the explosive shell that could with great ease, cripple a standard wooden hulled warship, this truth was exposed at the Battle of Sinope in 1853. For this reason, warships had to be armored. By 1856, Great Britain drafted a design for an armored corvette. In 1857, France began construction on the first ocean going ironclad, La Gloire, which was launched in 1859. This development quickly caused Great Britain to begin construction on HMS Warrior and HMS Black Prince. By the time HMS Warrior was commissioned in 1861, the Royal Navy had decided that its entire battle fleet needed to be armored. While the British and the French naval arms race was intensifying, the United States was entering into its greatest crisis, the United States Civil War. After the outbreak of the Civil War, the majority of the United States Navy remained loyal to the Union. The Confederacy, therefore, gained inspiration from the ironclads across the Atlantic, quickly obtaining its own ironclads. CSS Manassas was the first to enter service, but was eventually brought down by a hail of Union broadside fire. The CSS Virginia, however, made an impact. Meanwhile, the Union began stockpiling City Class ironclads and in 1862, the USS Monitor was completed. After the veritable stalemate between the CSS Virginia and USS Monitor, the Union utilized its superior production capabilities to mass produce ironclads and enter them into service in the Union Navy. As the Union began armoring its increasingly large navy, the world’s foremost naval power certainly took notice. Therefore, this paper will utilize British newspapers, government documents, Royal Naval Reviews, and various personal documents from the 1860’s in order to examine the British public and naval reaction to the Union buildup of ironclad warships.

Margaret Siriol Colley

Born in 1925 in Lewisham, London, to a Welsh family, Margaret Siriol Colley spent some years at Roedean before later being evacuated to Nova Scotia in Canada during the second...

Cyclops Lesions in Military Personnel: A Reason for Delayed Return to Fitness post Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction

We present the case of a Royal Naval Serviceman, who initially presented with a ruptured Anterior Cruciate Ligament injury which was repaired in Belgium. Upon his return to the UK he failed to return to fitness. His prolonged recovery time could have led to his discharge from the services. We aim to highlight a complication of ACL reconstructive surgery which should be identified early in Royal Naval Personnel to ensure that they have an adequate time to rehabilitate from further surgery before being considered unfit for duty. Medical officers caring for patients who have had ACL reconstruction who fail to progress should be aware of this sequela and seek specialist review, particularly in patients who have had Fast-Track surgery and may not be getting formal Orthopaedic post-operative review.

The strange disappearances of James Lind

The strange disappearances of James Lind

Herbert Brian Kelly

After qualifying Herbert Brian Kelly worked at St Thomas’, during which time he was posted to Midhurst Hospital in preparation for receiving casualties from the D-Day landings. After national service...

Peter Graeme Arblaster

Peter Graeme Arblaster trained at University College Hospital, London. He married Dorothy (“Dorsey”) Vaughan Watkins, a ward sister, in May 1944 and one month later joined the navy as a...

Web wise.

It was not only sailors, soldiers and air crew who set sail with the task force to the Falkland Islands 30 years ago. The hospital ship Uganda had a contingent of nurses and sisters from Queen Alexandra's Royal Naval Nursing Service.

South Atlantic Medal Association 1982

It was not only sailors, soldiers and air crew who set sail with the task force to the Falkland Islands 30 years ago. The hospital ship Uganda had a contingent of nurses and sisters from Queen Alexandra’s Royal Naval Nursing Service.

The men of Nelson's navy: A comparative stable isotope dietary study of late 18th century and early 19th century servicemen from Royal Naval Hospital burial grounds at Plymouth and Gosport, England

We present stable isotopic analyses of collagen from 80 servicemen excavated from the late 18th/early 19th century naval hospitals at Plymouth (50) and Haslar, Gosport (30) in southern England. Historical records suggest that, the diets of these two populations should be essentially identical. While δ(15) N of the rib collagen confirmed that naval servicemen were relatively well-catered for in terms of meat allowance (Plymouth average δ(15) N = 11.1‰, Gosport = 11.9‰), stable carbon isotope analysis produced average values for the two assemblages, which were significantly different (Plymouth average δ(13) C = -18.8‰, Gosport = -20.0‰). We postulate that these differences stem from divergent naval postings, with a greater proportion of Plymouth individuals serving in areas that entailed a greater input of C(4) foodstuffs. By comparison with published data from approximately contemporary burials at Snake Hill, Ontario, Canada and Chesapeake Bay, Virginia, we suggest that this area is the east coast of North America. For 15 of the 30 individuals from Gosport, we have data on ribs, femur, and dentine from the same skeleton, which appear to show that they came from a variety of locations in their preadolescence, but converged in dietary terms onto a "naval average," which is consistent with historical evidence for recruitment patterns into the Navy at the time. By comparison with published data from skeletons recovered from the wreck of the Mary Rose (sank 1545), we conclude that this naval diet was virtually unchanged from the 16th century to the end of the 18th century.

William Malcolm Ferguson

William (“Willie”) Ferguson was born in Lochbisdale, South Uist. He qualified as a doctor during the second world war and served in the Royal Naval Reserve in a variety of...

A MAN WHO KNEW MEN: THE MEMOIRS OF MAJ M.G. IND

In January 1990 there occurred the death of Maj Montagu G. lnd, at the age of 89. He was, to the best of the author's knowledge, the last surviving member of those seconded Royal Navy personnel who sailed to South Africa in the three vessels, Crozier, Eden and Foyle, and who formed the nucleus of the South African Naval Services (1921-1934). However, it is felt that his memoirs possess a deep and multi-faceted appeal, which transcend his long and extremely varied military career (spanning 40 years and encompassing service in the Royal Navy, South African Naval Services, South African Instructional Corps and South African Air Force). This interest may be defined in terms which the author categorizes as both intrinsic and extrinsic. The intrinsic facet relates to the subject of the memoirs, rooted in the personality and service of Maj Ind. It is beyond dispute that that career is truly extraordinary, in several important respects. First, with regard to the biographical dimension, Maj Ind was, in all probability, the youngest member to serve in the ill-starred and horrendous Gallipoli campaign, serving in the Royal Naval Division, renowned for the extremely heavy casualties that this unit incurred, and the savage fighting in which it was involved. Indeed, his extremely youthful experiences in combat have provided the source of the title of these memoirs. As Maj Ind states at one point, his service in the Dardanelles had formed a profound barrier between himself and those of his own age, as he had 'known men' in the extremities of combat, an awareness which, obviously, could not be shared with his peer group. Second, Maj Ind participated in little known, but nevertheless fascinating, episodes in British military history; exemplified in his service with the naval expeditionary force to Russia, immediately following the end of World War I. His ship's sinking of a Russian destroyer, and capture of a second, highlights the revelation of obscure passages in the Royal Navy's history, through the medium of Maj Ind's memoirs; which relate at that point to the British Government's support of the newly independent Baltic states, in the face of Bolshevik aggrandisement.