linking ships to stations (royal navy)

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bsp_fan
Ships Boy
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linking ships to stations (royal navy)

Post by bsp_fan »

hi experts,

i was wondering if there's a way to link ships of the RN to stations (e.g. east indies and china station etc.)?

any hints would be really appreciated!
Navclio
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Re: linking ships to stations (royal navy)

Post by Navclio »

This is a vague request: a comprehensive reply would be quite long. What do you mean by "linking"? Do you want to know the stations to which a particular ship was assigned during her operational career, or do you want a list of all of the ships assigned to a specific station at a particular time (a year, a month, or what?)? What time period are you interested in—the "China station" is quite late for sailing warships.

For British sail-powered warships, the directories by Rif Winfield, British Warships in the Age of Sail, 4 vols., give an operational history for each warship (not for auxiliaries), based on Admiralty records, that includes battles, expeditions, and geographic areas such as the Mediterranean or Leeward Islands.

In the 18th century, I know that the Admiralty compiled a monthly list, sometimes headed "List of His Majesty's Ships in Sea Pay," that was organized by geographic area ("At Home," "Plantations," etc.), function ("Convoys and cruisers"), or command ("With Admiral Hawke"). This included all of the ships in commission, including some ships undergoing repairs. They are now part of the ADM 8 series at the British National Archives in Kew, London. As far as I know, they have not been published—you have to go to Kew to look at them, or pay a researcher to photograph them for you. An intelligent and knowledgeable researcher should be able to find and photograph just the pages for a particular "station" of interest. They are bound in annual or multi-year volumes. The September 1744 report is 15 pages; later reports when the navy was much larger would be longer unless the amount of information was reduced (the 1744 reports include the names of all the lieutenants, as far as know in London, in each ship). I don't know how long these "disposition reports" were continued. David Steel published lists of the Royal Navy during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars that at least sometimes organized the ships by station or command. Similar lists had been published quarterly in the monthly Naval Chronicle during the 1805 campaign but were discontinued, perhaps because they were too useful to Napoleon and Decrès (his navy minister). After Waterloo, when the navy began publishing an official "Navy List," ships might be grouped by station, or the station might be given for each ship. I don't know when these start.

For some stations before 1802, two readily available books have lists of the ships assigned to the most important stations or commands. Robert Beatson, Naval and Military Memoirs of Great Britain from 1727 to 1783 includes such lists in vols. 3 and 6. There are more lists in Isaac Schomberg, Naval Chronology, I think mostly or entirely in vol. 6. Schomberg's work ends in 1802.

There might be published histories of individual stations that would list the ships assigned there. These are likely to be fairly old and therefore digitized by various projects including Google Books. The only way to find them would be to search using the name of the station and words like "history" as search terms. There might be lists of ships in histories of particular places like Jamaica or Halifax, Nova Scotia.
USmilitary
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Re: linking ships to stations (royal navy)

Post by USmilitary »

The United States has almost 800 military bases in inside and outside of the country. Every people of the country should know about the military of bases of the country.
Cy
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Re: linking ships to stations (royal navy)

Post by Cy »

But as threedecks is a site interested only in naval warfare prior to 1850, modern US military bases are of no relevance what so ever. I would also argue that only Americans (and possibly Isis and Russia) have a vested interest in that knowledge.
OK, it was me, probably!
Grammont
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Re: linking ships to stations (royal navy)

Post by Grammont »

Actually we (talking as a site editor) already have a way of doing it, as editors can create fleets and they don't have to be for specific actions. Therefore it would be (if we had the info) quite possible to create a listing for the Royal Navy Squadron at Newfoundland 1775, say, the problem being, there appears to be no way for users to actually search for specific fleets.
Cy
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Re: linking ships to stations (royal navy)

Post by Cy »

No Fleet pages as yet, one day though :) and vessels on a station was one of the reasons for introducing them in the first place.
OK, it was me, probably!
TimOak
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Re: linking ships to stations (royal navy)

Post by TimOak »

Naval Chronology: Or, An Historical Summary of Naval & Maritime ..., Volume 4
By Isaac Schomberg has an appendix that lists some fleets and stations with the vessels under their command, if that is of any help
Military
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Re: linking ships to stations (royal navy)

Post by Military »

The Fort Hood base, located in Killeen, Bell County in the state of Texas, US, was built in 1942. The base is located 60 miles north of Austin, the capital of Texas. Fort Hood is the biggest active duty base of the US Armed Forces and currently houses the 1st Cavalry Division and the 4th Infantry Division. Fort Hood is named in the honour of Confederate General John Bell Hood. The post is known as ‘The Great Place’ because of the quality of standard it maintains.
Military bases in texas
Cy
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Re: linking ships to stations (royal navy)

Post by Cy »

Not sure what a base founded in 1942 has to do with sailing navies pre-1850 though?
OK, it was me, probably!
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