Cheers Scotchie. Re the cut down photo in your #78 captioned as showing "The Fleet." The full photo is shown below and depicts the old pre-Dreadnoughts of the Majestic class. These are easily distinguished by having twin funnels disposed athwartships (side by side) as opposed to all later classes which were conventionally disposed fore and aft. They were built between 1895 and 1898 and were already obsolescent at the time of this photo. They were used in minor roles worldwide in WW1 with several being disarmed and their guns mounted on monitors.
Enormous changes were taking place in the Navy at this time with the dynamic Admiral Jackie Fisher as First Sea Lord taking the Victorian Navy into the new century (these ships were still painted with black hulls, white upperworks and yellow ochre funnels up until 1903). HMS Dreadnought had been completed in 1906 rendering all previous battleships outclassed and the naval race with Germany was in full swing.
The various fleets in home waters into which the Navy was organised - Channel Fleet, Atlantic Fleet, Home Fleet - were being reorganised in the first decade of the 20th century. I suspect that this is one of those fleets on its annual exercises. It would not have stayed in Dover for very long as there were none of the facilities of a naval base, merely a port of refuge i.e. encircling breakwaters to shelter anchored/moored vessels from inclement weather and enemy torpedoes.
There is a photo of one of the fleets in Dover in 1906 on page 36 of "Dover in old picture postcards Vol.1." I imagine that this would have been the first visit as the breakwaters were still under construction. The photo below was therefore taken somewhere between 1907 and 1913, probably prior to 1910.
The destroyers in the foreground were known as turtlebacks from the shape of their forecastles and were built just before the turn of the century. They were referred to as the "thirty knotters" from the speed they could make when new. They formed one of the mainstays of the Dover Patrol in the early years of the war, together with the Tribals, but were utterly clapped out and lucky to make 20-25 knots. The mighty fleet of Dreadnought battleships was formed into the Grand Fleet at the start of WW1 and based at Scapa Flow, with the battlecruisers at Rosyth, and they necessarily claimed all the modern destroyers.
There is a very nice picture of three of the thirty knotters looking very smart in the Granville Dock prior to WW1 in Kath Hollingsbee's section on the Dover Society website below. They were all scrapped immediately after the war, of course.
http://doversociety.homestead.com/WWI.html#anchor_179
Another photo of the Majestic class in Dover in the years before WW1
HMS Albemarle in Dover in 1910. One of the later pre-Dreadnoughts, built in 1903. She has had to put two chains out to the mooring buoy showing just how exposed and uncomfortable Dover was as a base for warships due to the swells that build up in the large expanse of enclosed water and the strong currents through the entrances. One of this series, HMS Venerable, briefly operated with the Dover Patrol in 1914 bombarding the Belgian coast. The Camber had to be built in the northeastern corner of the harbour to provide a more sheltered environment for submarines and motor launches, now filled in and part of the hardstanding in the Eastern Docks.
Been nice knowing you :)
Been nice knowing you :)
