Devonport (naval base)

Aerial view of HMNB Devonport
(on the right bank)

The Naval Base Devonport (officially Her Majesty's Naval Base Devonport ) is a naval base of the British Royal Navy . It is located in Plymouth, England on Hamoaze and is the largest naval base in Western Europe .

history

The first dock of the naval base, built at the end of the 17th century

Already Walter Raleigh had suggested a naval base at Plymouth on the west end of the English Channel. In 1677 Charles II visited several possible places during his visit to Plymouth, but it was not until May 1689 that William III decided . the construction of a naval base and a naval shipyard with dock facilities. In 1691 the naval base was opened as Plymouth Dock , in 1698 construction work was completed on what was then about 10 hectares. The naval base played an increasingly important role in the naval wars of the 18th century and during the coalition wars and was expanded several times over the years. New docks were built in 1727, 1762 and 1793 . In September 1843 the base was renamed Dockyard Devonport . In 1846 the docks were expanded to include the North Yard , and in 1895 the North Yard was expanded. During the world wars , up to 300 warships were temporarily stationed on the base. Besides Portsmouth , Devonport was the main starting point for the Normandy invasion in 1944.

After the Second World War, the area of the naval base covered 73 hectares. In the course of the downsizing of the Royal Navy from the 1960s, the capacities of the base were also significantly reduced. In the late 1960s it was decided to station all aircraft carriers and cruisers in Portsmouth in the future . This not only meant a major loss of image for the base, but above all the loss of several thousand jobs.

City of Devonport

At the beginning of the 18th century, the first workers built their houses in the immediate vicinity of the naval base. It was not until 1773 that a bridge was built over Stonehouse Creek , so that the settlement called simply Plymouth Dock and the naval base could also be reached by land from Plymouth. With the increasing importance of the naval base, the settlement continued to grow, so that at the beginning of the 19th century it had more inhabitants than the city of Plymouth itself with around 30,000 inhabitants. Eventually the settlement became independent as Devonport on January 1, 1824 . In 1914 Devonport was merged with Stonehouse and Plymouth to form the Borough of Plymouth.

From 1750, on the opposite bank of the Tamar from the naval shipyard , on the Cornish peninsula of Rame , a housing estate for the naval shipyard was built. The settlement called Torpoint has been connected to the shipyard by ferry since 1791 . In 1872 Torpoint became an independent municipality.

Town hall and column commemorating the founding of the town in Devonport

Fortification of Devonport

In 1757 the land side of the naval base was fortified with earth walls and trenches. In 1770 and 1779 several redoubts and other fortifications were built to be able to repel attacks from the sea. Around 1810, the ramparts on the land side were reinforced with walls, the trenches were deepened, also in the 1850s. With the construction of the new fort belt around Plymouth from the 1860s, the fortifications became superfluous. The ramparts and trenches were filled in and removed, some fortifications are still preserved and are now used as parks, such as Mount Pleasant Redoubt and Mount Wise Redoubt .

today

In the 1990s, the Royal Navy closed a total of four of its eight naval bases in the British Isles, making the four remaining bases regain importance. Devonport was upgraded to the new frigates of the Duke class as well as the nuclear submarines of the Trafalgar class record. In 1994 it was decided to concentrate the amphibious capacities of the Royal Navy on Devonport in the future. In order to be able to maintain and repair the new amphibious ships of the Royal Navy, in particular the helicopter carrier HMS Ocean , the base was expanded by several larger docks from 1995.

Furnishing

The base extends for 6 km along the Hamoaze. It has 14 dry docks , five harbor basins and 25 additional tide-dependent berths for ships. The entire base has a land and water area of 263 hectares. In addition to around 4,000 military personnel, there are also almost 2,500 civilian employees on and around the base. The Naval Base Devonport is the largest employer in the city of Plymouth and accounts for over 10 percent of its economic output.