Royal Navy

The Royal Navy of the United Kingdom is the "senior service" of the British armed services, being the oldest of its three branches. From approximately 1692 until World War II, the Royal Navy was the largest and most powerful navy in the world. The navy helped establish the United Kingdom as the dominant military and economic power of the 18th and 19th century, and was essential for maintaining the British Empire. Although the Royal Navy is now much smaller, it remains the largest Western European navy, the second largest navy in the world in terms of gross tonnage, and one of the world's most technologically advanced. It formed the basis for most other navies with few exceptions, and masses of sailors from Commonwealth and Friendly Navies attend Royal Naval Training Programmes in Britain. The end of the Cold War with the collapse of the Soviet Union has precipitated a restructuring of the Royal Navy's role as a major naval player in the Twenty-first century, from that of a deterrence force to a navy capable of extending British foreign policy worldwide.

Royal Navy timeline and battle honours

• 1588 The Spanish Armada
• 1652 Battle of Dungeness
• 1690 Battle of Beachy Head
• 1692 Battle of La Hougue
• 1692 Battle of Plaisance (Placentia)
• 1759 Battle of Quiberon Bay
• 1780 Battle of Cape St. Vincent (1780)
• 1781 Battle of the Chesapeake
• 1782 Battle of the Saintes
• 1794 The Glorious First of June
• 1797 Battle of Cape St. Vincent (1797)
• 1798 Battle of the Nile
• 1801 Battle of Copenhagen
• 1805 Battle of Trafalgar
• 1808–1814 Peninsular war
• 1812–1814 War of 1812
• 1821 First steam paddle ships for auxiliary use (tugs etc.)
• 1840 First screw driven Steamship, Rattler
• 1902 First Royal Navy submarine, Holland 1
• 1905 First Steam turbine and all big-gun battleship, Dreadnought
• 1914–1918 First Battle of the Atlantic
• 1914 Battle of Heligoland Bight, Battle of Coronel, Battle of the Falkland Islands
• 1915 Battle of Dogger Bank and Dardanelles Campaign
• 1916 Battle of Jutland
• 1919 Russian Civil War
• 1931 Invergordon Mutiny
• 1939–1945 Second Battle of the Atlantic
• 1939 Battle of the River Plate
• 1940 Operation Dynamo (Dunkirk)
• 1941 Battle of Cape Matapan
• 1941 Sinking of HMS Hood and the German battleship Bismarck
• 1942 Battle of North Cape
• 1944 Operation Tungsten
• 1944 Allied invasion of Normandy
• 1946 Mining of Saumarez and Volage in the Corfu Channel Incident
• 1949 Amethyst incident on the Yangtze River
• 1950 Korean War begins
• 1956 Suez campaign
• 1962 Indonesian Konfrontasi begins in Borneo
• 1963 First British nuclear submarine, Dreadnought
• 1965 Beira Patrol against Rhodesia begins
• 1980 Armilla Patrol in the Persian Gulf begins
• 1982 Falklands War
• 1991 Gulf War
• 1999 Kosovo conflict
• 2000 Sierra Leone
• 2001 Afghanistan Campaign
• 2003 Iraq War