The School That Jack Built : The Royal Naval College, Osborne 1903-1923 (3 Revised edition)

The Royal Naval College, Osborne, was the brainchild of Admiral Sir John Arbuthnot Fisher, (1841-1920), the charismatic Second Sea Lord, known universally as 'Jackie' Fisher, an enthusiastic innovator and lateral thinker.

He adroitly seized the opportunity afforded by King Edward VII's gift of Osborne House to the nation in 1902 to gain permission to take over part of Queen Victoria's former estate whereon to found a school for naval cadets.

It was to be dedicated to Fisher's fundamental principle that as the existence of the Navy depended on machinery, all combatant officers must have engineering training; a view which was not universally accepted by those naval officers of the old school who thought it ungentlemanly to "go down the coal-hole".

When, after the end of the 1914-18 war the Royal Navy was much reduced in size, Osborne became no longer viable and it closed in 1923. However, by the time war came again in 1939, most naval officers aged between 34 and 49 had been Osborne cadets and were to bear the brunt of tactical responsibility in the great naval engagements such as the River Plate; Narvik, Matapan and the continuing struggles to keep the sea lanes open across the Atlantic, through the Mediterranean and to North Russia; not to mention the war against Japan in the Far East.

The author, himself a retired naval officer, now gives us a sympathetic sketch of what was a great, if short-lived, naval institution.