The South African Naval College provides naval officer training to the South African Navy [1] and is one of three officer training institutions within the South African National Defence Force, the equivalent of the Air Force Gymnasium and the Army Gymnasium [2]
HMS Thames was a Mersey-class cruiser launched in 1885 for the Royal Navy. Thomas Benjamin Frederick Davis was a wealthy businessman, yachtsman and philanthropist. In 1920 Davis bought the Thames from the British Admiralty and sent her to South Africa. He donated the ship to the South African government and stipulated that it had to be used for the full-time training of boys for careers at sea. It was renamed TS (training ship) General Botha in honour of the South African prime minister. She was moored in Simon's Bay, outside the naval dockyard. [3]
On 15 March 1922 the first intake of seventy five boys joined ship in Simon's Bay. General Botha's wife was supposed to conduct the official christening, but she was feeling poorly, with the result that Isie Smuts had to officiate on 1 April 1922. The TS General Botha remained in Simon's Bay for the next twenty years, during which 1,276 cadets received their training. The presence of German submarines in the southern oceans in 1942 caused the naval authorities to become concerned for the safety of the cadets living on board the TS General Botha. They were therefore moved up to Red Hill, but still went down to the ship for their daily training. At the end of the year the TS General Botha was commandeered by the navy and berthed in the dockyard for the rest of the war. [3]
After the war it was found that the TS General Botha was beyond economical repair. On 13 May 1947 she was towed into False Bay to a position nine nautical miles ESE of the Roman Rock lighthouse and sunk by gunfire from Scala battery. [3]
At the end of April 1948 the cadets were moved to the former SAAF crash boat station at Gordons Bay. The name of the establishment was changed to The South African Nautical College General Botha and the new Captain-Superintendent was Captain G V Legassick RNR. For the next 10 years General Botha prospered. A new engineering course was introduced as well. Then in 1958 the government decided to place the establishment under the control of the South African Navy. [3]
Captain Legassick was replaced with Commander SC Biermann, on whom rested the unenviable job of combining the courses for the Merchant Marine and the Navy, while remaining the commanding officer of the Naval Gymnasium in Saldanha. This difficult relationship between the two services continued until 1966, when the new South African Merchant Navy Academy was established at Granger Bay. [3]
A midshipman is an officer of the lowest rank in the Royal Navy, United States Navy, and many Commonwealth navies. Commonwealth countries which use the rank include Canada, Australia, Bangladesh, Namibia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Pakistan, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and Kenya.
The Merchant Navy is the maritime register of the United Kingdom and comprises the seagoing commercial interests of UK-registered ships and their crews. Merchant Navy vessels fly the Red Ensign and are regulated by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA). King George V bestowed the title of "Merchant Navy" on the British merchant shipping fleets following their service in the First World War; a number of other nations have since adopted the title. Previously it had been known as the Mercantile Marine or Merchant Service, although the term "Merchant Navy" was already informally used from the 19th century.
HMS Jervis Bay was a British liner later converted into an armed merchant cruiser, pennant F40. She was launched in 1922, and sunk in battle on 5 November 1940 by the German heavy cruiser Admiral Scheer in an action which earned her captain the Victoria Cross.
Pangbourne College is a co-educational private day and boarding school located in Pangbourne, Berkshire. It is set in 230 acres, on a hill south-west of the village, in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
A training ship is a ship used to train students as sailors. The term is mostly used to describe ships employed by navies to train future officers. Essentially there are two types: those used for training at sea and old hulks used to house classrooms. As with receiving ships or accommodation ships, which were often hulked warships in the 19th Century, when used to bear on their books the shore personnel of a naval station, that were generally replaced by shore facilities commissioned as stone frigates, most "Training Ships" of the British Sea Cadet Corps, by example, are shore facilities.
Hugo Hendrik Biermann, was a senior officer in the South African Navy. He served as Chief of the Navy from 1952 to 1972 and Chief of the South African Defence Force from 1972 until 1976, the only naval officer to have served in the post.
HMAS Creswell, is the training facility of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) that predominately includes The Royal Australian Naval College (RANC) as well as the School of Survivability and Ship's Safety, the Beecroft Weapons Range, an administrative support department and Training Ship Jervis Bay. It is located between Jervis Bay Village and Greenpatch, on the shores of Jervis Bay in the Jervis Bay Territory. The RANC has been the initial officer training establishment of the Royal Australian Navy since 1915.
The Marine Society is a British charity, the world's first established for seafarers. In 1756, at the beginning of the Seven Years' War against France, Austria, and Saxony Britain urgently needed to recruit men for the navy. Jonas Hanway (1712–1786), who had already made his mark as a traveller, Russia Company merchant, writer and philanthropist, must take the chief credit for founding the society which both contributed to the solution of that particular problem, and has continued for the next two and a half centuries to assist many thousands of young people in preparing for a career at sea.
HMD Bermuda was the principal base of the Royal Navy in the Western Atlantic between American independence and the Cold War. The Imperial fortress colony of Bermuda had occupied a useful position astride the homeward leg taken by many European vessels from the New World since before its settlement by England in 1609. French privateers may have used the islands as a staging place for operations against Spanish galleons in the 16th century. Bermudian privateers certainly played a role in many English and British wars following settlement, with its utility as a base for his privateers leading to the Earl of Warwick, the namesake of Warwick Parish, becoming the most important investor of the Somers Isles Company. Despite this, it was not until the loss of bases on most of the North American Atlantic seaboard threatened Britain's supremacy in the Western Atlantic that the island assumed great importance as a naval base. In 1818 the Royal Naval Dockyard, Bermuda officially replaced the Royal Naval Dockyard, Halifax, as the British headquarters for the North America Station (which would become the North America and West Indies Station after absorbing the Jamaica Station in 1830.
Pakistan Marine Academy (PMA) is located at Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan. It is a Seafarers Training Academy, working under Federal Ministry of Maritime Affairs, Government of Pakistan as an autonomous department. It is affiliated with NED University of Engineering and Technology and is also recognised by Higher Education Commission, Pakistan. Pakistan Marine academy covers an area of around 136 acres on the water front in Karachi Harbor, Hawksbay Road.
The Bermuda Sea Cadet Corps was created in 1966 and registered as a charity under the Bermuda Sea Cadet Association Act, 1968. The first unit had actually been created two years earlier.
The Thames Nautical Training College, as it is now called, is a school that trains officers for a seagoing career. It was, for over a hundred years, situated aboard ships named HMS Worcester. London shipowners, marine insurance underwriters and merchants subscribed to its founding. It was the London maritime interests' answer to HMS Conway, which had been established in 1859 on the River Mersey as a training ship for Liverpool's burgeoning merchant fleet. Throughout their history, Worcester and Conway were competitors, and the two met regularly on playing fields and in boats in keen sporting rivalry.
Training Ship Chanakya located near the city of Mumbai, is a shore based successor to the Training Ship Rajendra (1972–1993) & Training Ship Dufferin (1927–1972), is situated off Palm beach road in an area of about 40 acres (160,000 m2). T.S. Chanakya is the oldest and most renowned maritime academy in India.
HMS Thames was a Mersey-class protected cruiser built for the Royal Navy (RN) in the 1880s. The ship was placed in reserve upon her completion in 1888 and was converted into a submarine depot ship in 1903. She was sold out of the navy in 1920 and was purchased by a South African businessman to serve as a training ship for naval cadets under the name SATS General Botha. The ship arrived in South Africa in 1921 and began training her first class of cadets in Simon's Town the following year. General Botha continued to train cadets for the first several years of World War II, but the RN took over the ship in 1942 for use as an accommodation ship under her original name. She was scuttled by gunfire in 1947 and is now a diveable wreck.
Hong Kong Sea Cadet Corps is a youth organization based in Hong Kong and formed in 1968 by former Royal Naval Reserve officers by the creation of Hong Kong Law
The South African Naval Museum is a maritime museum in Simon's Town, South Africa. It contains collections and artefacts related to the maritime history of South Africa and the South African Navy.
The Training Ship Mercury, or TS Mercury, was a naval training establishment founded as a ship in 1885 and then a shore-based school at Hamble in Hampshire from 1892 until its closure in July 1968. Although one of over thirty pre-sea training schools founded during the Victorian period, it was the only privately owned establishment training boys for both the Royal and Merchant Navies.
Vice Admiral Glen Syndercombe was a former Chief of the South African Navy.
HMS Worcester was a 52-gun 1,500 ton fourth rate frigate of the Royal Navy, the last of six Southampton class ships built, and the fifth naval ship to bear the name. Ordered in 1818, she was laid down in Deptford Dockyard in 1820 but then delayed, spending 23 years on the stocks before being launched on 10 October 1843 and completed at Sheerness Dockyard in November.
The Nautical Training Corps (NTC) is a National Maritime Training and Uniformed Youth Organisation based in the south of England. Registered Charity Number: 306084, Cadets follow similar rates and ranks, traditions, values and ethos as the British Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) and the Merchant Navy.
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