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Royal Naval Academy Portsmouth

Royal Naval Academy

In 1733 a Royal Naval Academy was established at Portsmouth Dockyard as a facility to train officers for the Royal Navy. The founders' intentions were to provide an alternative means to recruit officers and to provide standardized training, education and admission for 40 recruits.

A comprehensive syllabus provided theoretical and practical experience in the dockyard and at sea. Graduates of the Academy could earn two years of sea time as part of their studies, and would be able to take the lieutenant's examination after four years at sea instead of six. The Academy did not, however, achieve the objective of becoming the preferred path to becoming naval officers. The traditional means of a sea-going "apprenticeship" remained the preferred alternative. The vast majority of the officer class was still recruited in this manner based on family ties, and patronage. Family connections, "interest" and a sincere belief in the superiority of practical experience learned on the quarterdeck ensured that the officer class favoured the traditional model. William IV summed up this view when he remarked that "there was no place superior to the quarterdeck of a British man of war for the education of a gentleman".

In 1806 the Academy was reconstituted as the "Royal Navy College" and in 1816 was amalgamated with the School of Naval Architecture.

Masters
1733-1740 Thomas Haselden, FRS
1740-1755 John Walton
1755-1766 John Robertson, FRS
1766-1785 George Witchell, FRS
1785-1807 William Bayly
1807-1838 James Inman as Professor of the Royal Naval College

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org

The first School of Naval Architecture opened in 1811 in Portsmouth and closed in 1832. The Royal School of Naval Architecture or Royal School of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering were an institution founded in South Kensington in 1864 to train naval architects. It was founded by Joseph Woolley, who had been Principal of the short-lived School of Mathematics and Naval Construction in Portsmouth (1848-1853).

In 1873 the School moved to the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, then in 1967 to University College London. Many of its graduates entered the Royal Corps of Naval Constructors.

School of MathematicsThe School of Mathematics and Naval Construction was intended as a finishing school for a select number of shipwright apprentices, to prepare them as officers in the dockyards. They were sent to the school for the final three years of their seven-year apprenticeship, to be taught mathematics by Wooley and shipbuilding by the master shipwright of the dockyard. Unusually, they were also taught chemistry in a laboratory created at the back of the school for the use of W.J. Hay, the chemical assistant of the dockyard.

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