NAVVIES' CORPS 



sea i 



NAVY 



Navvies' Corps. Hritish labour 

 unit in tin- (Jreat War. It was the 

 name popularly given to tli<> 

 lnln>ur liuttiilidiis <>f the Middlesex 

 ivniinriit. in tin- raising i'f uliirh 

 l.i. ut Col. John Ward. M.P., took 

 a leading part, himself becoming 

 of the 19th L'nd 

 ic Works Pioneers) Middlesex 

 in May, 1915. Composed 

 liu-fly of labourers or navvies, the 

 corps rendered excellent services 

 in the Great War in constructing 

 roads, and in other work for whirh 

 tln-y wore specially fitted. See Mid- 

 dlesex Regiment ; Ward, John. 



Navvy. Name applied to a 

 labourer employed on road making 

 or other digging operations. The 

 wnnl is an abbreviation of navi- 

 gator, the term applied in the late 

 Isth and early 19th centuries to a 

 liiliourvr employed in digging 

 canals. It was later applied to un- 

 skilled labourers on roads and rail- 

 ways. A steam navvy is a machine 

 for digging. See Excavator. 



Navy (Lat. navis, ship). Term 

 used for the collection of men and 

 ships that form the force a country 

 maintains for fighting at sea. 

 Originally it described all a nation's 

 vessels, whether used for trade or 

 warfare. At the present day, practi- 

 cally every country which has a 

 seaboard has a navy, although a 

 number of them are of little value 

 as fighting units. 



The first navy of note was that 

 of Athens, although as early as 

 664 B.C. both Corinth and Corcyra 

 had fleets of fighting ships, as a 

 little later had nearly all the little 

 states of Greece. The Persians and 

 Egyptians had fleets about this 

 time, and the battle of Salamis was 

 fought in 480 B.C. between the Per- 

 sians and a navy composed of 

 ships supplied by Athens and her 

 allies. The Athenian navy, which 

 owed much to Themistocles, ap- 

 pears to have been well organized, 

 with an efficient and trained per- 

 sonnel, and its services to Athens 

 and her allies during the Pelopon- 

 nesian War gave the world its first 

 great lesson in the value of sea 

 power. Unlike the European navies 

 of the 16th century, it was a collec- 

 tion of vessels, the long ships, 

 maintained by the state solely for 

 fighting purposes, not one assem- 

 bled hastily from various ports and 

 owners to meet an emergency. 



Rome and Carthage had each a 

 navy, evidently of considerable 

 size, and one was established for 

 the eastern empire. Much of their 

 work consisted in the suppression 

 of pirates, who then, as later, 

 swarmed in the Mediterranean. 

 Partly for the same reason navies 

 were maintained by Venice and 

 Genoa and other trading states. The 



lain- navies of modern European 

 P"\UTH arose from the few vessels 

 niaiiitiiini-il by the sovereigns. 

 spam had, early, a considerable 

 navy, while England and the 

 I'uti-li republic soon made reputa- 

 tions on the sea. Scotland and 

 France were among other countries 

 that possessed small royal navies 

 in the 15th century, as did Portu- 

 gal and Denmark. Somewhat later, 

 Frederick William laid the founda- 

 tion of the navy of Prussia, and 

 Peter the Great rendered a like 

 service to Russia. 



There was in early navies no 

 sharp distinction between a war- 

 ship and a merchantman. The 

 merchantman was, of necessity, 

 always ready to fight, and the navy 

 was simply a collection of these, 

 after extra men and arms had been 

 provided, reinforced perhaps by a 

 few vessels built more especially 

 for fighting purposes. In the 18th 

 century navies came to consist of 

 ships built solely for fighting, and 

 it was such that fought the battles 

 of the Napoleonic period. 



For many years after Trafalgar 

 there was little change in the essen- 

 tials of the world's navies, but in 

 the second half of the 19th century 

 began the evolution of the modern, 

 navy, a collection of specialized ves- 

 sels, endless in variety and size, yet 



each designed for a particular piece 

 of work and all alike embodying 

 the last effort* of science and skill 

 As regards navies in general be- 

 fore the Great War, the tendency 

 was to look at them from the point 

 of view of relative strength, and, in 

 Britain, to the position of that 

 country in that connexion. The 

 Hritish navy had long been un- 

 questionably stronger than any 

 other taken singly, but its directors 

 were forced to consider the possi- 

 bility of a combination against it. 

 Thus was evolved the two-power 

 standard, i.e. the theory that the 

 British navy should be equal to 

 the next two combined, though 

 some argued for a three-power 

 standard, while others asserted that 

 Britain's position demanded that 

 she should possess 50 per cent, of 

 the world's naval strength. The two- 

 power standard was maintained 

 against France and Russia, but the 

 rapid growth of the German navy 

 imperilled it. See Sea Power ; con- 

 sult also Naval Annual, 1886, foL ; 

 All the World's Fighting Ships, 

 F. T. Jane, 1898, fol. 



The following table, taken from 

 a parliamentary paper and other 

 sources, 1922, shows the strength of 

 the various navies of the world 

 on Feb 1, 1922, the numbers in- 

 cluding vessels built and building : 



THE BRITISH NAVY AND ITS HISTORY 



John Leyland, Author ol The Royal Navy 

 In addition to the companion article on the British A rmy, see Sea 

 Power. See also biographies of Nelson and other seamen, the 

 accounts of Jutland, Lepanto, Nile, Trafalgar and other battles and 

 the descriptions of the various warships, e.g. Battleship ; Cruiser ; 

 Submarine See also Guns ; Torpedo ; articles on Dreadnought and 

 other individual warships tend col. plate of naval uniforms 



The history of the British navy 

 may be said to begin with the long 

 ships of King Alfred, though 

 Offa, King of Mercia, had a fleet 

 before him. Alfred's ships marked 

 a great advance upon their pre- 

 decessors. They carried a single 

 mast and a square sail ; some of 

 them had as many as 60 oars. 

 Canute was strong at sea beyond 

 all his rivals. Harold, in 1066, 

 had a considerable fleet. The 

 nearest approach to a perma- 

 nent force was the organization 

 of the Cinque Ports, where the 

 barons, experienced seamen, kept 

 their busses, cogs, and other 

 vessels at the disposal of the king 

 in return for the enjoyment of 



certain privileges. This system 

 was economical and contributed 

 to rapid mobilisation in time of a 

 national emergency. 



Richard I, in the Crusade of 

 1 190, was the first English monarch 

 to employ a great fleet on a distant 

 enterprise. John made some 

 beginning of a fixed organization 

 by appointing a " keeper of the 

 king's ships." At this time two 

 very important actions were 

 fought when Longsword, earl of 

 Salisbury, in 1213, went over to 

 Damme and destroyed the com- 

 bined French and Flemish fleet 

 before it could put to sea, and 

 when Hubert de Burgh, by a fine 

 act of seamanship, defeated the 



