The Battle of Trafalgar was a naval engagement between the British Royal Navy and the combined fleets of the French and Spanish Navies during the War of the Third Coalition of the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815).
HMAS Nestor (G02) was an N-class destroyer of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN). Built in Scotland, Nestor was commissioned in February 1941; although manned by Australians and commissioned as an Australian warship, she remained the property of the Royal Navy.
HMAS Pirie (J189/B249/A123), named for the city of Port Pirie, was one of 60 Bathurst-class corvettes constructed during World War II and one of 20 built on Admiralty order but manned by personnel of and commissioned into the Royal Australian Navy (RAN).
The Invergordon Mutiny was an industrial action by around 1,000 sailors in the British Atlantic Fleet that took place on 15–16 September 1931. For two days, ships of the Royal Navy at Invergordon were in open mutiny, in one of the few military strikes in British history.
HMAS Australia was one of three Indefatigable-class battlecruisers built for the defence of the British Empire. Ordered by the Australian government in 1909, she was launched in 1911, and commissioned as flagship of the fledgling Royal Australian Navy (RAN) in 1913. Australia was the only capital ship ever to serve in the RAN.
HMAS Australia (I84/D84/C01) was a County-class heavy cruiser of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN). One of two Kent-subclass ships ordered for the RAN in 1924, Australia was laid down in Scotland in 1925, and entered service in 1928. Apart from an exchange deployment to the Mediterranean from 1934 to 1936, during which she became involved in the planned British response to the Abyssinia Crisis, Australia operated in local and South-West Pacific waters until World War II began.
This glossary of nautical terms is an alphabetical listing of terms and expressions connected with ships, shipping, seamanship and navigation on water. Some remain current, while many date from the 17th to 19th centuries. The word nautical derives from the Latin nauticus, from Greek nautikos, from nautēs: "sailor", from naus: "ship".
The line-crossing ceremony is an initiation rite that commemorates a person's first crossing of the Equator. The tradition may have originated with ceremonies when passing headlands, and become a "folly" sanctioned as a boost to morale, or have been created as a test for seasoned sailors to ensure their new shipmates were capable of handling long, rough voyages. Equator-crossing ceremonies, typically featuring King Neptune, are common in the Navy and are also sometimes carried out for passengers' entertainment on civilian ocean liners and cruise ships. They are also performed in the merchant navy and aboard sail training ships.
HMS Shannon was a 38-gun Leda-class frigate of the Royal Navy. She was launched in 1806 and served in the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812. She won a noteworthy naval victory on 1 June 1813, during the latter conflict, when she captured the United States Navy frigate USS Chesapeake in a singularly bloody battle.
USS Alden (DD-211) was a Clemson-class destroyer of the United States Navy (USN). Serving during World War II, Alden is the only ship of the US Navy to have been named for Rear Admiral James Alden, Jr. (1810–1877).
HMS Orpheus was a Jason-class Royal Navy corvette that served as the flagship of the Australian squadron. Orpheus sank off the west coast of Auckland, New Zealand on 7 February 1863: 189 crew out of the ship's complement of 259 died in the disaster, making it the worst maritime tragedy to occur in New Zealand waters.
The second USS Amphitrite—the lead ship in her class of iron-hulled, twin-screw monitors—was laid down, on June 23, 1874, by order of President Ulysses S. Grant's Secretary of Navy George M. Robeson at Wilmington, Delaware, by the Harlan and Hollingsworth yard; launched on 7 June 1883; sponsored by Miss Nellie Benson, the daughter of a Harlan and Hollingsworth official; and commissioned at the Norfolk Navy Yard, Portsmouth, Virginia, on 23 April 1895, Captain William C. Wise in command.
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) is a decentralised militant group in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. MEND's actions – including sabotage, theft, property destruction, guerrilla warfare, and kidnapping – are part of the broader conflict in the Niger Delta and reduced Nigeria's oil production by 33% between 2006-07.
HMNZS Arbutus was a modified Flower-class corvette of the Royal New Zealand Navy (RNZN). Built for the Royal Navy as HMS Arbutus, the corvette was transferred to the RNZN on completion in 1944, and operated in the British Pacific Fleet during the final year of World War II. In April 1947, Arbutus was one of the units involved in a mutiny over poor pay and working conditions. She was decommissioned in 1948 and broken up for scrap in 1951.
The action of 6 April 1809 was a small naval battle fought between the French frigate Niémen and several British frigates, principally HMS Amethyst, as part of the blockade of Brest, France during the Napoleonic Wars. During the Wars, a central part of British strategy was to isolate French ports from international trade in an attempt to both restrict French imports of food and military supplies and simultaneously to damage the French economy. To achieve this, British warships maintained a constant vigil off the French coastline, attacking ships that attempted to enter or leave French ports. Despite the threat that their ships faced, communication and the transfer of supplies between France and her colonies was vital to the French war effort, and the French Navy made constant attempts to evade the patrolling British squadrons. In late 1808, a significant French squadron was deployed to Isle de France to disrupt British trade in the Indian Ocean. This force required reinforcement and supply from France, and periodic attempts were made to reach the isolated convoy with new frigates, the first of which was Niémen.
During April 1947, the Royal New Zealand Navy (RNZN) experienced a series of non-violent mutinies amongst the enlisted sailors of four ships and two shore bases. Over 20% of the RNZN's enlisted personnel were punished or discharged for their involvement. The main cause was the poor rates of pay compared to the rest of the New Zealand Defence Force and equivalent civilian wages, exacerbated by the release of a long overdue government review which failed to address the issue. Sailors saw the new pay rates as still inferior to the other branches of the military, with the increases being consumed by taxes, inflation, and the cancellation of allowances and benefits. The poor living and working conditions aboard RNZN ships was another issue, compounded by sailors having no effective way to make dissatisfaction known to the higher ranks. Dissatisfaction with peacetime duties and opportunities also contributed, with many sailors locked into enlistment periods of up to 12 years, and demobilisation efforts prioritising those enlisted specifically for the duration of World War II.
As a ship's boat, the pinnace is a light boat, propelled by oars or sails, carried aboard merchant and war vessels in the Age of Sail to serve as a tender. The pinnace was usually rowed but could be rigged with a sail for use in favorable winds. A pinnace would ferry passengers and mail, communicate between vessels, scout to sound anchorages, convey water and provisions, or carry armed sailors for boarding expeditions. The Spanish favored them as lightweight smuggling vessels while the Dutch used them as raiders. In modern parlance, "pinnace" has come to mean an auxiliary vessel that does not fit under the "launch" or "lifeboat" definitions.
The Second Battle of Algeciras was a naval battle fought on the night of 12 July 1801 between a squadron of British Royal Navy ships of the line and a larger squadron of ships from the Spanish Navy and French Navy in the Gut of Gibraltar.
A sailor, seaman, mariner, or seafarer is a person who works aboard a watercraft as part of its crew, and may work in any one of a number of different fields that are related to the operation and maintenance of a ship.
This glossary of nautical terms is an alphabetical listing of terms and expressions connected with ships, shipping, seamanship and navigation on water. Some remain current, while many date from the 17th to 19th centuries. The word nautical derives from the Latin nauticus, from Greek nautikos, from nautēs: "sailor", from naus: "ship".
