:00:10. > :00:14.Higham. The British Empire could not have
:00:14. > :00:18.existed without the Royal Navy which for 200 years was the world 's most
:00:18. > :00:21.formidable fighting force. But the beginnings of the Navy were
:00:21. > :00:27.unpromising and today it is a shadow of its former self. The rise and
:00:27. > :00:33.fall of the British navy is a story told in a new book, Empire Of The
:00:33. > :00:37.Deep, by a young British historian, Ben Wilson.
:00:37. > :00:42.Ben Wilson, there is a chapter in this book where you run through some
:00:42. > :00:47.of the words and phrases in English that we get from the sea and from
:00:47. > :00:53.the Navy, things like learning the, some of them obvious like plain
:00:53. > :01:02.sailing, all at sea, grog, and able term, slush fund, I did not realise
:01:02. > :01:06.that was a naval term. Sailors ate a terrible quality of food which was
:01:06. > :01:13.ancient salt beef and salt fish, which had been preserved in salt and
:01:13. > :01:18.boils down to make it edible enough for a sailor. When it boils, the fat
:01:18. > :01:24.rose to the surface and it cooked. They sold the fat onto members of
:01:24. > :01:30.the crew for waterproofing and to Greece around the ship and it was
:01:30. > :01:40.called the slush fund. penetration into English of terms
:01:40. > :01:40.
:01:40. > :01:50.like that, they are an indication of how central the Navy was to English
:01:50. > :01:53.culture and to the idea of Britain and Britons. Yes, the language, we
:01:53. > :01:58.use it almost without thinking, flagship policies, things like that.
:01:58. > :02:02.It goes back to a time when the Navy was the centre of political and
:02:02. > :02:07.national life. It was from very unpromising beginnings, the Navy
:02:07. > :02:13.became very important in the late 19th century, but before that, even
:02:13. > :02:18.though we were an island nation, we were pretty awful with naval warfare
:02:18. > :02:23.and great victories like the Spanish Armada, they were a bit of a fluke?
:02:23. > :02:28.Yes, that is a very interesting part of the history of the Royal Navy,
:02:28. > :02:33.her sudden the take-off was in the middle of the 17th century. Before
:02:33. > :02:38.that, England did not have the tax base to fund a large Navy, and that
:02:38. > :02:43.was a problem for the English kings during the Middle Ages. And in the
:02:43. > :02:47.16th century, you do have English fighters at sea, but there are
:02:47. > :02:53.people like Drake and Hawkins that I really private ears, they are not
:02:53. > :02:57.institutional naval men, they are alone guns. Yes, they come into the
:02:57. > :03:01.Navy at key points, there is that medieval idea of the collective
:03:01. > :03:05.naval strength of the country belonging to private individuals and
:03:05. > :03:08.being used as part of the state, but they were guns for hire. They were
:03:08. > :03:15.out for their own gain, but even though they were supported by the
:03:15. > :03:18.state and by the Crown, they had their own agenda, so the national
:03:18. > :03:26.strategy was undermined by the activities of bloodthirsty men out
:03:26. > :03:32.to gain on the high sees. But that is where they gained their skills.
:03:32. > :03:40.-- out on the high seas. What made the 18th-century such a formidable
:03:40. > :03:45.force? With the fiscal military revolution in the 16 90s, the state
:03:45. > :03:51.was able to tax and fund the Navy, they could fund a dockyard to
:03:51. > :03:55.support a fleet that would go around the world and acts simultaneously in
:03:55. > :03:57.different places. This was unheard-of previous to that when an
:03:57. > :04:01.expedition to the French coast pretty much bankrupt the
:04:01. > :04:05.government, but there was a willingness on the part of people to
:04:05. > :04:12.support the Navy and to see it as a projection of national power and
:04:12. > :04:17.national pride and to invest in it, and this led to more success and
:04:17. > :04:22.more political nations taking the Navy to its heart. This culminated
:04:22. > :04:28.with the Navy of the Napoleonic Wars and Nelson, which would you say is
:04:28. > :04:31.the greatest admiral, Admiral Nelson? There are a number of great
:04:31. > :04:37.Admiral 's throughout English and British history. Nelson brought
:04:37. > :04:41.together a lot of the qualities they had, but Nelson had the Nelson
:04:41. > :04:47.touch. He could reach down to his mentoring courage them to find, he
:04:47. > :04:53.had a sure grasp of tactic, he had gone to see at a very early age, he
:04:53. > :04:57.was a great leader of men. He had a magnetic as a malady on the ship and
:04:57. > :05:06.with the fleet. There are many heroes in this book, people that do
:05:06. > :05:10.heroic things, but people you admire for the impact they had was the
:05:10. > :05:15.invention of the Georgian Navy, the 18th-century Royal Navy, then there
:05:15. > :05:20.was Jackie Fisher, the man that really grew up with the Navy as it
:05:20. > :05:30.went from sale to steam and he was a gonorrhoea expert, he was the first
:05:30. > :05:31.
:05:31. > :05:38.Sea Lord, why is it that he was such a remarkable man! -- and he was a
:05:38. > :05:45.military ammunition expert. This was very much the shape of a modern Navy
:05:45. > :05:50.that we would recognise. There was this Gentry figure that wanted to
:05:50. > :05:53.show that the Nelson era was over and you needed to use technology,
:05:53. > :06:00.every bit of new technology had to be seized upon and he was a young
:06:00. > :06:06.man that was an expert on to appease a warfare. In the 1860s and the
:06:06. > :06:14.early 1870s, he had a grasp of these things and he saw that long-range
:06:14. > :06:19.animation was important when people were resistant to these ideas. This
:06:19. > :06:28.was now warfare that would take place over five males, up to ten
:06:28. > :06:31.miles further. -- over five miles. During the war, the Navy kept
:06:31. > :06:39.Britain afloat, it sure that the country could keep fighting securing
:06:39. > :06:42.that constant inflow of imports as well as offensive operations, but
:06:42. > :06:51.the decline after the Second World War was very fast and it is
:06:51. > :06:55.continuing. Yes, the Navy has lost its NATO role in preventing
:06:55. > :07:00.submarine attacks in the north Atlantic, it has become the trigger
:07:00. > :07:05.for other weapons. It delivers troops or aircraft or helicopters to
:07:05. > :07:09.battle scenes. It does not fight in the high seas any more. You say that
:07:09. > :07:14.the reason why the Navy is no longer central to our thinking as a
:07:14. > :07:18.society, is that we do not actually feel in danger and in more.
:07:18. > :07:22.Throughout England and Britain's history, this season always been a
:07:22. > :07:27.source of threats to the nation, the modern world, those threats have all
:07:27. > :07:31.gone? They seem to have gone, the security of the Seas is an
:07:31. > :07:34.international operation and they are guarded by a coalition of forces.
:07:34. > :07:44.The Navy works within that system now which is very different from
:07:44. > :07:45.
:07:45. > :07:48.before. There are no local threat on the high seas. The trade was
:07:48. > :07:55.affected by pirates off the African coast, that could be a feature of
:07:55. > :08:01.naval warfare. The Navy are now taking part in pirate policing
:08:01. > :08:05.duties because others cannot do it. This is harping back to an age that
:08:05. > :08:12.others might have forgotten. Private companies doing the work of the