 National Museum of the Royal Navy official logo | |
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| Established | 2009 |
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| Director | Dominic Tweddle |
| Website | nmrn.org.uk |
The National Museum of the Royal Navy was created in early 2009 to act as a single non-departmental public body for the museums of the Royal Navy. With venues across the United Kingdom, the museums detail the history of the Royal Navy operating on and under the sea, on land and in the air.
The National Museum of the Royal Navy:
| Museum | Location | |
|---|---|---|
 | National Museum of the Royal Navy, Hartlepool | Jackson Dock, Hartlepool [1] |
 | National Museum of the Royal Navy, Portsmouth | Portsmouth Dockyard, Hampshire [1] |
 | Royal Marines Museum | Closed April 2017 [2] |
 | Royal Navy Submarine Museum | Gosport, Hampshire |
 | Fleet Air Arm Museum | RNAS Yeovilton, Ilchester, Somerset |
 | Explosion Museum of Naval Firepower | Gosport, Hampshire [3] |
Ships of the National Museum of the Royal Navy include:
| Museum | Location | |
|---|---|---|
 | HMS Victory | Portsmouth Dockyard Hampshire [4] |
 | HMS Trincomalee | Hartlepool [5] |
 | HMS Warrior | Portsmouth Dockyard Hampshire |
 | HMS Caroline | Belfast |
 | HMS M.33 | Portsmouth Dockyard Hampshire |
 | HMS Alliance | Portsmouth Dockyard Hampshire |
In the financial year starting 1 April 2009, the NMRN co-ordinated Grants in Aid from the UK Ministry of Defence and the four original museums became integral parts of the NMRN.
The NMRN is also the custodian of HMS Victory, Admiral Lord Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.
HMS Alliance, the only surviving British Second World War submarine, re-opened following a £7 million conservation and restoration project, in 2014.
On 3 April 2014, The Babcock Galleries opened at the NMRN's Portsmouth Museum. The £4.5M project created 'HMS' – the Hear My Story exhibition, which tells the story of the 20th and 21st Century Royal Navy and its people, and a special exhibition space. [6]
In October 2014, the Museum received funding to restore D-Day Landing Craft (Tank) LCT 7074 . The craft was raised from where it had sunk at moorings in Birkenhead, and was transported to Portsmouth for conservation. [7]
In August 2015, the First World War Monitor HMS M.33, currently undergoing restoration, opened to the public. [8] In December the same year, the museum acquired RML 497, a Second World War motor launch. [9]
HMS Caroline, Belfast, joined the museum on 31 May 2016, on the centenary of the Battle of Jutland.
HMS Warrior was transferred to the museum in 2017 from the Warrior Preservation Trust, and the museum has helped finish ongoing HLF Works as well as undertaking a further restoration of the ship, including new paintwork on the ship's hull.
A warship or combatant ship is a naval ship that is built and primarily intended for naval warfare. Usually they belong to the armed forces of a state. As well as being armed, warships are designed to withstand damage and are typically faster and more maneuverable than merchant ships. Unlike a merchant ship, which carries cargo, a warship typically carries only weapons, ammunition and supplies for its crew. Warships usually belong to a navy, though they have also been operated by individuals, cooperatives and corporations.
HMS Warrior is a 40-gun steam-powered armoured frigate built for the Royal Navy in 1859–1861. She was the name ship of the Warrior-class ironclads. Warrior and her sister ship HMS Black Prince were the first armour-plated, iron-hulled warships, and were built in response to France's launching in 1859 of the first ocean-going ironclad warship, the wooden-hulled Gloire. Warrior conducted a publicity tour of Great Britain in 1863 and spent her active career with the Channel Squadron. Obsolescent following the 1873 commissioning of the mastless and more capable HMS Devastation, she was placed in reserve in 1875, and was "paid off" – decommissioned – in 1883.
HMSM33 is an M29-class monitor of the Royal Navy built in 1915. She saw active service in the Mediterranean during the First World War and in Russia during the Allied Intervention in 1919. She was used subsequently as a mine-laying training ship, fuelling hulk, boom defence workshop and floating office, being renamed HMS Minerva and Hulk C23 during her long life. She passed to Hampshire County Council in the 1980s and was then handed over to the National Museum of the Royal Navy in 2014. A programme of conservation was undertaken to enable her to be opened to the public. HMS M33 is located within Portsmouth Historic Dockyard and opened to visitors on 7 August 2015 following a service of dedication. She is one of only three surviving Royal Navy warships of the First World War and the only surviving Allied ship from the Gallipoli Campaign, the other being the Ottoman minelayer Nusret, preserved in Çanakkale.
HMS Bristol (D23) was a Type 82 destroyer, the only vessel of her class to be built for the Royal Navy. Bristol was intended to be the first of a class of large destroyers to escort the CVA-01 aircraft carriers projected to come into service in the early 1970s but the rest of the class and the CVA-01 carriers were cancelled as a result of the 1966 Defence White Paper which cut defence spending.
The Hedgehog was a forward-throwing anti-submarine weapon that was used primarily during the Second World War. The device, which was developed by the Royal Navy, fired up to 24 spigot mortars ahead of a ship when attacking a U-boat. It was deployed on convoy escort warships such as destroyers and corvettes to supplement the depth charges.
Octopus is a 126-metre (413 ft) megayacht built for Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. She is one of the world's largest yachts. Launched in 2003 at a cost of $200 million, Octopus is a private vessel that has been loaned out for exploration projects, scientific research initiatives and rescue missions.
His Majesty's Naval Base, Portsmouth is one of three operating bases in the United Kingdom for the Royal Navy. Portsmouth Naval Base is part of the city of Portsmouth; it is located on the eastern shore of Portsmouth Harbour, north of the Solent and the Isle of Wight. Until the early 1970s, it was officially known as Portsmouth Royal Dockyard ; thereafter the term 'Naval Base' gained currency, acknowledging a greater focus on personnel and support elements alongside the traditional emphasis on building, repairing and maintaining ships. In 1984 Portsmouth's Royal Dockyard function was downgraded and it was formally renamed the 'Fleet Maintenance and Repair Organisation' (FMRO). The FMRO was privatized in 1998, and for a time, shipbuilding, in the form of block construction, returned. Around 2000, the designation HMS Nelson was extended to cover the entire base.
HMS Forth, pennant number F04 later A187, was a submarine depot ship.
HMS Caroline is a decommissioned C-class light cruiser of the Royal Navy that saw combat service in the First World War and served as an administrative centre in the Second World War. Caroline was launched and commissioned in 1914. At the time of her decommissioning in 2011 she was the second-oldest ship in Royal Navy service, after HMS Victory. She served as a static headquarters and training ship for the Royal Naval Reserve, based in Alexandra Dock, Belfast, Northern Ireland, for the later stages of her career. She was converted into a museum ship. From October 2016 she underwent inspection and repairs to her hull at Harland and Wolff and opened to the public on 1 July 2017 at Alexandra Dock in the Titanic Quarter in Belfast.
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.
The National Museum of the Royal Navy, Portsmouth, formerly known as the Royal Naval Museum, is a museum of the history of the Royal Navy located in the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard section of HMNB Portsmouth, Portsmouth, Hampshire, England. The museum is part of the National Museum of the Royal Navy, a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Ministry of Defence. It received 1,081,909 visitors in 2017.
Holland 1 is the first submarine commissioned by the Royal Navy. The first in a six-boat batch of the Holland-class submarine, she was lost in 1913 while under tow to be scrapped following her decommissioning. Recovered in 1982, she was put on display at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum, Gosport. Her battery bank found in the boat was discovered to be functional after being cleaned and recharged.
HMS Alliance(P417/S67) is a Royal Navy A-class, Amphion-class or Acheron-class submarine, laid down towards the end of the Second World War and completed in 1947. The submarine is the only surviving example of the class, having been a memorial and museum ship since 1981.
The National Museum of the Royal Navy (NMRN) is a maritime exposition and visitor attraction in Hartlepool, County Durham, Northern England. The concept of the attraction is the thematic re-creation of an 18th-century seaport, in the time of Lord Nelson, Napoleon and the Battle of Trafalgar. HMS Trincomalee, a Royal Navy frigate and Britain's oldest warship afloat is at the centre of the quay. She was built in Bombay, India in 1817. The 190th anniversary of the ship's official launch was on Friday 12 October 2007.
His Majesty's Naval Base, Devonport is one of three operating bases in the United Kingdom for the Royal Navy and is the sole nuclear repair and refuelling facility for the Royal Navy. The largest naval base in Western Europe, HMNB Devonport is located in Devonport, in the west of the city of Plymouth, England.
HMS Victory is a 104-gun first-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy. She was ordered in 1758, laid down in 1759, and launched in 1765. With 245 years of service as of 2023, she is the world's oldest naval vessel still in commission.
HM LCT 7074 is the last surviving Landing Craft, Tank (LCT) in the UK. LCT 7074 is an amphibious assault ship for landing tanks, other vehicles and troops on beachheads. Built in 1944 by Hawthorn Leslie and Company, Hebburn, the Mark 3 LCT 7074 was part of the 17th LCT Flotilla during Operation Neptune in June 1944.
Portsmouth Historic Dockyard is an area of HM Naval Base Portsmouth which is open to the public; it contains several historic buildings and ships. It is managed by the National Museum of the Royal Navy as an umbrella organization representing five charities: the Portsmouth Naval Base Property Trust, the National Museum of the Royal Navy, Portsmouth, the Mary Rose Trust, the Warrior Preservation Trust Ltd and the HMS Victory Preservation Company. Portsmouth Historic Dockyard Ltd was created to promote and manage the tourism element of the Royal Navy Dockyard, with the relevant trusts maintaining and interpreting their own attractions. It also promotes other nearby navy-related tourist attractions.
George Butler Honour DSC, was a British submariner during the Second World War. Honour was captain of HMS X23, one of the X-Craft responsible for guiding landing craft on during Operation Neptune. His particular role was to aid the navigation of ships heading for one of the British invasion areas, codenamed Sword.
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| Royal Marines Museum | |
| Fleet Air Arm Museum | |
| Royal Navy Submarine Museum | |
