ABSTRACT

At the end of the First World War the Royal Navy's battle order included 58 capital ships, 103 cruisers, 12 aircraft carriers, 450 or so destroyers and more than 100 submarines a testament to the years of naval rivalry that ended with the scuttling of the German High Seas Fleet in waters of Scapa Flow. The Admiralty Secretary, Sir Oswyn Murray, agreed, and on 29 October 1926, more than fifty years after it accepted first naval students, the Royal Naval College finally received approval to fly the White Ensign. The move away from recruiting specialist staff with previous university experience was accelerated with the closure of the Royal Naval College Osborne in 1921, when teachers from junior college were offered employment at Greenwich. By the beginning of 1919 the College was receiving more students than at any point to date, but the diversion of the sub-lieutenants to Cambridge had at least created space to accommodate the Royal Naval Staff Course.