The seventeenth Royal Navy vessel to be named HMS Dolphin was the Royal Naval shore establishment sited at Fort Blockhouse in Gosport. Dolphin was the home of the Royal Navy Submarine Service from 1904 to 1999, and location of the Royal Navy Submarine School.
The blockhouse and fortifications of the site had been constructed from the 14th century onwards, but in the late nineteenth century, it was deemed surplus by the Royal Commission, and was handed over to the Royal Navy in 1904. [1] The navy set about expanding the site by added new blocks and accommodation for various ranks, and the base became an independent command in August 1912. [2] Originally it was known simply as Haslar Submarine Base, but was renamed as HMS Dolphin sometime after 1907, when the last ship to be called HMS Dolphin was brought to the site to provide extra accommodation. [3] Heavy bombing during the Second World War on Gosport and Portsmouth, saw the submarine training school moved to Blyth in Northumberland as HMS Elfin. [4] [5] [6]
HMS Dolphin closed as a submarine base on 30 September 1998, [7] although the last RN submarine permanently based at Gosport was HMS Opossum which had left five years earlier in 1993. [8] The Royal Navy Submarine School (RNSMS) remained at Dolphin until 23 December 1999 when it closed prior to relocation to HMS Raleigh at Torpoint in Cornwall. The RNSMS staff marched into HMS Raleigh and were welcomed on board by Commodore Lockwood on 31 January 2000. The RNSMS is located in the Dolphin and Astute blocks at Raleigh, although the Submarine Escape Training Tank (SETT), a 30-metre (98 ft) deep tank of water used to instruct all RN submariners in pressurised escape, remained active at the same site, now renamed Fort Blockhouse, until early 2020, when it was replaced with a newer training facility at HM Naval Base Clyde. [9] [10]
The Royal Navy Submarine Museum is still sited nearby on Haslar Jetty Road next to Fort Blockhouse and Royal Naval Hospital Haslar.
Gosport is a town and non-metropolitan borough, on the south coast of Hampshire, South East England. At the 2021 Census, its population was 81,952. Gosport is situated on a peninsula on the western side of Portsmouth Harbour, opposite the city of Portsmouth, to which it is linked by the Gosport Ferry. Gosport lies south-east of Fareham, to which it is linked by a Bus Rapid Transit route and the A32. Until the last quarter of the 20th century, Gosport was a major naval town associated with the defence and supply infrastructure of His Majesty's Naval Base (HMNB) Portsmouth. As such over the years extensive fortifications were created.
Admiral of the Fleet Michael Cecil Boyce, Baron Boyce, was a British Royal Navy officer who also sat as a crossbench member of the House of Lords until his death in November 2022.
Fort Blockhouse is a military establishment in Gosport, Hampshire, England, and the final version of a complicated site. At its greatest extent in the 19th century, the structure was part of a set of fortifications which encircled much of Gosport. It is surrounded on three sides by water and provides the best view of the entrance to Portsmouth Harbour. It is unique in two respects. Firstly, it was built over five centuries from its original construction as a blockhouse in 1431 to the final addition of submarine base structures in the mid-1960s. Secondly, it is thought to be the oldest fortified position in the United Kingdom that is still in active military use though coastal fortification was abolished nationally in 1956, and it has been used only for medical purposes since 2020.
Commander Donald Cameron, VC was a Scottish sailor and a recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces. He is one of three VC recipients from the small town of Carluke in South Lanarkshire. The Rotary Club of Carluke have erected a millennium stone in the town market place to commemorate this.
Numerous Royal Navy vessels have been named HMS Dolphin after the dolphin.
The Royal Navy Submarine Museum at Gosport is a maritime museum tracing the international history of submarine development from the age of Alexander the Great to the present day, and particularly the history of the Royal Navy Submarine Service from the navy's first submarine, Holland 1, to the nuclear-powered Vanguard-class submarines. The museum is located close to the former shore establishment HMS Dolphin, the home of the Royal Navy Submarine Service from 1904 until 1999.
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Haslar is on the south coast of England, at the southern tip of Alverstoke, on the Gosport peninsula, Hampshire. It takes its name from the Old English hæsel-ōra, meaning "hazel-landing place". It may have been named after a bank of hazel strewn on marshy grounds around Haslar Creek to make it passable and habitable in old times, or merely because hazel grew there.
A Submarine Escape Training Tower is a facility used for training submariners in methods of emergency escape from a disabled submarine underwater. It is a deep tank filled with water with at least one underwater entrance at depth simulating an airlock in a submarine. Since the 1930s, towers have been built for use by the Royal Navy, US Navy, Royal Australian Navy and in several other countries.
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