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Sir Robert Harland, 1st Baronet
Admiral Sir Robert Harland, 1st Baronet (ca. 1715 – 21 February 1784) was a Royal Navy officer. He commanded HMS'' Tilbury'' at the Second Battle of Cape Finisterre in October 1747 during the War of the Austrian Succession and commanded HMS ''Princess Louisa'' at the Battle of Lagos in August 1759 during the Seven Years' War. He went on to be Commander-in-Chief of the East Indies Station and then First Naval Lord. Naval career Born the son of Captain Robert Harland, Harland joined the Royal Navy in 1729 when he was appointed a Volunteer-per-order on HMS ''Falkland''. He was present as a lieutenant on HMS ''Princessa'' at the Battle of Toulon on 11 February 1744. He was given command of the fireship HMS ''Scipio'' in 1745 and, with promotion to post captain on 19 March 1746, he took command of HMS'' Tilbury'' and took part in Second Battle of Cape Finisterre on 14 October 1747. He was then appointed to HMS ''Nottingham'' later that year and the following year had a majo ...
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Admiral
Admiral is one of the highest ranks in some navies. In the Commonwealth nations and the United States, a "full" admiral is equivalent to a "full" general in the army or the air force, and is above vice admiral and below admiral of the fleet, or fleet admiral. Etymology The word in Middle English comes from Anglo-French , "commander", from Medieval Latin , . These evolved from the Arabic () – (), “king, prince, chief, leader, nobleman, lord, a governor, commander, or person who rules over a number of people,” and (), the Arabic article answering to “the.” In Arabic, admiral is also represented as (), where () means the sea. The 1818 edition of Samuel Johnson's ''A Dictionary of the English Language'', edited and revised by the Rev. Henry John Todd, states that the term “has been traced to the Arab. emir or amir, lord or commander, and the Gr. , the sea, q. d. ''prince of the sea''. The word is written both with and without the d, in other languages, as w ...
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HMS Falkland (1696)
HMS ''Falkland'' was a 50-gun fourth-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, built by Holland of New Castle, New Hampshire, and purchased by the navy in 1696. She had the distinction of being the first warship built in what would nearly a century later become the United States of America. She was ordered by the British Admiralty in 1690 and delivered on 2 March 1696. During her career she escorted merchant ships to America, and in 1704 engaged the 36-gun French ship ''La Seine'' off the Azores. Together with they succeeded in capturing her and renamed her . She was rebuilt for the first time at Chatham Dockyard in 1702 as a fourth rate of between 46 and 54 guns. Her second rebuilt took place at Deptford, where she was reconstructed according to the 1719 Establishment and relaunched on 28 August 1720. On 8 December 1742 orders were issued for ''Falkland'' to be taken to pieces and rebuilt for what was to be the final time at Bursledon, where she was reconstructed according ...
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Board Of Admiralty
The Board of Admiralty (1628–1964) was established in 1628 when Charles I put the office of Lord High Admiral into commission. As that position was not always occupied, the purpose was to enable management of the day-to-day operational requirements of the Royal Navy; at that point administrative control of the navy was still the responsibility of the Navy Board, established in 1546. This system remained in place until 1832, when the Board of Admiralty became the sole authority charged with both administrative and operational control of the navy when the Navy Board was abolished. The term Admiralty has become synonymous with the command and control of the Royal Navy, partly personified in the Board of Admiralty and in the Admiralty buildings in London from where operations were in large part directed. It existed until 1964 when the office of First Lord of the Admiralty was finally abolished and the functions of the Lords Commissioners were transferred to the new Admiralty Bo ...
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Battle Of Ushant (1778)
The Battle of Ushant (also called the First Battle of Ushant) took place on 27 July 1778, and was fought during the American Revolutionary War between French and British fleets west of Ushant, an island at the mouth of the English Channel off the north-westernmost point of France. "Ushant" is the Anglicised pronunciation of "Ouessant". The French commander was under orders to avoid battle if possible, in order to maintain a fleet in being. The commanders of the two squadrons of the British fleet were already personally and politically at odds with each other, and failed to make a concerted attack on the French. The battle, which was the first major naval engagement in the Anglo-French War of 1778, ended indecisively with no ships lost on either side and led to recriminations and political conflicts in both countries. Background The British had a fleet of thirty ships-of-the-line, four frigates, and two fire-ships commanded by Admiral Augustus Keppel, in , which sailed from ...
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Channel Fleet
The Channel Fleet and originally known as the Channel Squadron was the Royal Navy formation of warships that defended the waters of the English Channel from 1854 to 1909 and 1914 to 1915. History Throughout the course of Royal Navy's history there had been different squadrons stationed in home waters. One of the earliest known naval formations to be based at Plymouth was called the Western Squadron which was the forerunner of the Channel Squadron that was later known as the Channel Fleet. In 1650 Captain William Penn, Commander-in-Chief, was charged with guarding the Channel from Beachy Head to Lands End with six ships. This system continued following the Restoration. It was the start of what was to become a Western Squadron. From 1690 the squadron operated out of Plymouth Dockyard during wartime periods, which was for most of the 18th century and early 19th century. In 1854 The Channel Squadron, sometimes known as the Particular Service Squadron, was established. The Channel S ...
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The Gentleman's Magazine
''The Gentleman's Magazine'' was a monthly magazine founded in London, England, by Edward Cave in January 1731. It ran uninterrupted for almost 200 years, until 1922. It was the first to use the term '' magazine'' (from the French ''magazine'', meaning "storehouse") for a periodical. Samuel Johnson's first regular employment as a writer was with ''The Gentleman's Magazine''. History The original complete title was ''The Gentleman's Magazine: or, Trader's monthly intelligencer''. Cave's innovation was to create a monthly digest of news and commentary on any topic the educated public might be interested in, from commodity prices to Latin poetry. It carried original content from a stable of regular contributors, as well as extensive quotations and extracts from other periodicals and books. Cave, who edited ''The Gentleman's Magazine'' under the pen name "Sylvanus Urban", was the first to use the term '' magazine'' (meaning "storehouse") for a periodical. Contributions to the ...
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HMS Magnanime (1748)
''Le Magnanime'' was originally a 74-gun ship of the line of the French Navy launched in 1744 at Rochefort. Captured on 12 January 1748, she was taken into Royal Navy service as the third rate HMS ''Magnanime''. She played a major part in the 1757 Rochefort expedition, helping to silence the batteries on the Isle of Aix, and served at the Battle of Quiberon Bay in 1759 under Lord Howe, where she forced the surrender of the French 74-gun . Following a survey in 1770, she was deemed unseaworthy and was broken up in 1775. Construction ''Le Magnanime'' was built between 1741 and 1745 in the port of Rochefort on the Charente estuary, France, and was designed by the renowned shipwright Blaise Geslain. She was 165 French feet in length (153 French feet on the keel), 44 French feet in breadth and 22 French feet in depth in hold; she measured 1,600 tons (2,900 tons displacement). As remeasured by the British following her capture, she was along her gundeck with a beam, and with a de ...
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Action Of 31 January 1748
The action of 31 January 1748 was a minor naval battle of the War of Austrian Succession between two British Royal naval ships and a French naval ship of the line. The battle ended with the capture of the French ship of the line ''Le Magnanime''. In January 1748, ''Le Magnanime'' left Brest for the East Indies. She was partially dismasted in a storm off the coast of Ushant and while limping back to Brest, she was spotted by a British fleet under Edward Hawke. All sail was immediately made; under Captain Robert Harland having at 1 am closed with the chase commenced the action and a running fight of six hours duration ensued. The rear admiral having observed the size of the ship sent the sixty gun ship under Captain Stevens to proceed to the ''Nottinghams assistance. By the time the ''Portland'' had arrived up the French ship which proved to be the ''Magnanime'' a large class 74 gun ship commanded by the Marquis d'Albert after receiving a few shot from the ''Portland'' was fo ...
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Post Captain
Post-captain is an obsolete alternative form of the rank of captain in the Royal Navy. The term served to distinguish those who were captains by rank from: * Officers in command of a naval vessel, who were (and still are) addressed as captain regardless of rank; * Commanders, who received the title of captain as a courtesy, whether they currently had a command or not (e.g. the fictional Captain Jack Aubrey in '' Master and Commander'' or the fictional Captain Horatio Hornblower in ''Hornblower and the Hotspur''); this custom is now defunct. In the Royal Navy of the 18th and 19th centuries, an officer might be promoted from commander to captain, but not have a command. Until the officer obtained a command, he was "on the beach" and on half-pay. An officer "took post" or was "made post" when he was first commissioned to command a vessel. Usually this was a rated vessel – that is, a ship too important to be commanded by a mere commander – but was occasionally an unrated one. ...
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Fireship
A fire ship or fireship, used in the days of wooden rowed or sailing ships, was a ship filled with combustibles, or gunpowder deliberately set on fire and steered (or, when possible, allowed to drift) into an enemy fleet, in order to destroy ships, or to create panic and make the enemy break formation. Ships used as fire ships were either warships whose munitions were fully spent in battle, surplus ones which were old and worn out, or inexpensive purpose-built vessels rigged to be set afire, steered toward targets, and abandoned quickly by the crew. Explosion ships or "hellburners" were a variation on the fire ship, intended to cause damage by blowing up in proximity to enemy ships. Fireships were used to great effect by the outgunned English fleet against the Spanish Armada during the Battle of Gravelines,
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