BRNC Dartmouth is referred to as a ship with-in the Royal Navy.
High on a hill above the town of Dartmouth. In 1863 the training
hulks Britannia and Hindostan were moored on the river side of a
hilly peninsula called Mount Boone, the majority of which was owned
by the estate of Sir Walter Raleigh. Dartmouth's isolation provided
an ideal spot to prepare young men for naval service without the
distractive temptations of naval ports like Portsmouth and
Plymouth. The cleared portions near the top of the Raleigh property
were used as playing fields while the waterfront, called "Sandquay"
hosted the piers, docks and warehouses needed to service Britannia
and Hindostan. And so this went for nearly 40 years. Having decided
to abandon the hulks for reasons of overcrowding, health and
sanitation, and with Dartmouth the preferred location for a
purpose-built school, the Admiralty, with the concurrence of
Parliament, compulsorily purchased the land from the unwilling
administrators of the Raleigh Estate under the National Defence
Act. The present buildings date from 1905; the architect was Sir
George Aston Webb, one of the more distinguished of his day, whose
previous commissions included Admiralty Arch and the East Front of
Buckingham Palace. The foundation stone was laid by King Edward VII
in March 1902 and the first cadets entered the College three years
later. The major impetus for expansion came from accelerating
Anglo-German naval rivalry and by 1914 the College, with additional
accommodation, classrooms, was considerably larger than originally
conceived. With the outbreak of hostilities the cadets were
mobilised and sent to the Reserve Fleet where many served with
distinction. When war broke out again in 1939 the cadets remained
in the College, although their numbers had been increased
previously with the arrival of the Special Entry Scheme - one of
whom, Prince Philip of Greece, received the prize for the best
cadet and met his future bride, Princess Elizabeth Windsor. The
bombing of the College in September 1942 forced both staff and
students to be evacuated to Eaton Hall, Cheshire, until the end of
the war. The Dartmouth site subsequently became a centre for
Combined Operations in the run up to 'D' Day since Dartmouth had
become a major advanced amphibious base for American troops and
ships preparing for the Normandy landings. The Royal Naval College
re-opened in September 1946 and although structurally it remained
unchanged, the number and character of its courses was greatly
expanded. By the mid seventies the number of graduate entrants had
significantly increased. HRH The Prince of Wales was a graduate Sub
Lieutenant in the Autumn term entry of 1971. The range of courses
continued to expand. Two important new groups of officers came with
the arrival of the Special Duties Officers Pre-qualifying Course,
St. George, in 1974 and the WRNS Officers' Training Course, Talbot
in 1976. The training of female Naval Officers was integrated into
that of their male counterparts in 1990 and the Special Duties
Officers' Greenwich course moved to Dartmouth in 1996. Today,
Dartmouth with its university quality academic staff has joined
with the University of Plymouth.