Portsmouth History

Portsmouth is Britain’s foremost naval station. The city occupies the Portsea Island peninsula, which overlooks a naturally defensible harbour and these advantages were not lost on the Romans, or Saxons, who both used the harbour here.

However, it was Henry V who effectively founded the first Royal Navy, when he called his nobles to Porchester Castle and ordered them to commandeer every vessel on the south coast to assist with an invasion of France. Henry VII consolidated Portsmouth’s importance as a naval centre by establishing the world’s first dry docks and making it a royal dockyard but it was Henry VIII, who showed a real passion for building an impressive fleet.

At the start of his reign the Navy Royal stood at half a dozen vessels and by the end had grown to 58, the most famous of them being the Mary Rose, whose wreck is preserved in Portsmouth.