:00:04. > :00:12.of January the 14th has been set. More headlines coming up at the top
:00:12. > :00:18.the Author with Nick Higham. The British Empire couldn't have existed
:00:18. > :00:23.without the Royal Navy. Yet its beginnings were unpromising and to
:00:23. > :00:27.date it is a shadow of its former self. The rise and fall of the
:00:27. > :00:35.British navy is a story told in a new book by a young British
:00:35. > :00:40.historian. Ben Wilson, there is a chapter in
:00:40. > :00:45.this book in which you run through some of the words and phrases in
:00:45. > :00:55.English we get from the sea and the Navy, things like learning the
:00:55. > :00:57.
:00:57. > :01:06.ropes, plain sailing, all at sea, grog, slush fund. What was slush?
:01:06. > :01:10.Sailors ate horrible concoction of food, salt, pork, salt beef,
:01:10. > :01:14.vegetables preserved insult, and it would be boiled down to make it
:01:14. > :01:18.edible enough for a sailor. As it boiled the factories to the surface
:01:18. > :01:24.and the cook took this as his privilege, the fact, and sold it to
:01:24. > :01:31.members of the crew to waterproof rigging, Greece around the ship, and
:01:31. > :01:37.it was called a slush fund. The penetration into English of
:01:37. > :01:40.terms like that are an indication of how deeply imbued English culture
:01:40. > :01:48.was with things navel and are absolutely central the Royal Navy
:01:48. > :01:54.was for 250 years to Britain's idea of themselves.
:01:54. > :02:00.We use that language all the time, almost without thinking, flat ship
:02:00. > :02:05.-- flagship for example. It goes back to the time when Navy was at
:02:05. > :02:09.the centre of political life. It became very important in the late
:02:09. > :02:16.17th, 18th-century. Before that we were an island nation we were
:02:16. > :02:21.actually pretty awful at naval warfare and victories like a defeat
:02:21. > :02:24.of the Spanish Armada were a bit of a fluke.
:02:24. > :02:33.That is an interesting part of the history of the Royal Navy, hazard in
:02:33. > :02:39.the take-off was. -- how sudden the take-off was. There wasn't the tax
:02:39. > :02:46.base to fund the large navies. When you get to the 16th century you
:02:46. > :02:50.have English fighters at sea, but they are people like Drake. They are
:02:50. > :02:55.not institutional naval men, they all own guns.
:02:55. > :02:59.They are, but they come into the Navy at a key point. It is not --
:02:59. > :03:04.still the medieval idea of the collective navel belonging to
:03:04. > :03:09.private individuals and becoming used as part of the state that they
:03:09. > :03:15.were out for their own gain. Although they were supported by the
:03:15. > :03:21.state, the Crown, they have their own agenda. A national strategy
:03:21. > :03:26.undermined by the activities of McVitie -- but thirsty man of the
:03:26. > :03:30.high seas. That is where they lead their skills.
:03:30. > :03:35.The heyday of the Navy was the 18th century and the 19th century. What
:03:35. > :03:42.made the Georgian may be such a fun little force? -- formidable.
:03:42. > :03:46.With fiscal military revolution the state is able to tax and fund a
:03:46. > :03:50.permanent Navy, the dockyard that can support a huge fleet to be sent
:03:50. > :03:56.around the world, something unheard of the century before when either
:03:56. > :04:00.the next mission to the French post bankrupted the Crown. Now you can
:04:00. > :04:06.afford it but there is a willingness on the part of people to support the
:04:06. > :04:14.Navy to see it as a projection of national power, national pride, to
:04:14. > :04:19.invest in it. Its success led to more success, and the political
:04:19. > :04:29.nation took the Navy to its heart. That culminated with the Navy of the
:04:29. > :04:29.
:04:29. > :04:33.Napoleonic wars and Admiral Nelson. There are a number of great admirals
:04:33. > :04:39.throughout English and British history. Nelson brought together a
:04:39. > :04:43.lot of the qualities they had. He had the Nelson touch, could reach
:04:43. > :04:53.down to his men to encourage them to fight, he had a sure grasp of
:04:53. > :04:54.
:04:54. > :04:58.tactics, he became a great leader of men, a magnetic personality.
:04:58. > :05:02.There are a number of heroes in this book, people who do heroic things,
:05:02. > :05:12.and people who you clearly admired for the impact they had on the
:05:12. > :05:13.
:05:13. > :05:20.Navy. Another one is Jackie Fisher, who was the man who grew up with the
:05:20. > :05:25.Navy as it went from sale to steam and he was an expert and the first
:05:25. > :05:34.Sea Lord. Why is he such a remarkable man?
:05:34. > :05:42.He he boarded a ship unrecognisable to Nelson's Navy, aircraft carriers,
:05:42. > :05:45.so now, the shape of the modern Navy we would recognise. The Navy of
:05:45. > :05:51.Nelson and these gentry figures who had gone to see and wanted to fight
:05:51. > :05:55.was over. And you needed to use technology, every bit of new
:05:55. > :06:02.technology had to be seized upon, he was a young man, an expert on
:06:02. > :06:08.torpedo warfare and mine warfare. He grasped the things very early. He
:06:08. > :06:12.saw long-range gunnery was essential for modern conflict. A lot of people
:06:12. > :06:22.were very resistant to those ideas. They were still practising cutlass
:06:22. > :06:25.drill and firing at point-blank range.
:06:26. > :06:30.During the Second World War the Navy kept Britain flight, as it were,
:06:30. > :06:37.protected convoys, destroyed U-boats, and insured the country
:06:37. > :06:42.could keep fighting by securing that constant import as well as offensive
:06:42. > :06:51.operations. The decline after the Second World War was very fast, and
:06:51. > :06:53.it is continuing. The Navy has become, now it has lost its NATO
:06:54. > :06:59.role as preventing submarine attack in a North Atlantic, it has become
:06:59. > :07:03.the trigger for other weapons. It delivers troops or aircraft or
:07:03. > :07:07.helicopters to battle scenes, it doesn't fight on the high seas any
:07:07. > :07:12.more. You make the point that the reason why the Navy is no longer
:07:12. > :07:17.central to us and our thinking is we don't actually feel in danger any
:07:17. > :07:20.more. Throughout England and Britain's history seas have always
:07:20. > :07:25.been a of threat, invasion, the modern world, those threats have
:07:25. > :07:30.gone. They seem to have gone. Now the
:07:30. > :07:33.security of this series is an international operation, they are
:07:33. > :07:37.guarded by a coalition of forces, the Navy works within that system
:07:37. > :07:44.which is very different from before. There are no threats on the high
:07:44. > :07:48.seas, they come at choke points, Pirates of the African coast, that
:07:48. > :07:53.could become a feature of naval warfare again, and it is interesting
:07:53. > :07:59.private company is now undertaking convoy duties in pirate infested
:07:59. > :08:06.waters, because the Navy cannot do it, and that is a throwback to an