Quotes about British Navy

Horatio Nelson

When I came to explain to them the 'Nelson Touch', it was like an electric shock. Some shed tears, all approved - 'It was new - it was singular - it was simple!'.

William Blackstone

The royal navy of England hath ever been its greatest defense and ornament; it is its ancient and natural strength; the floating bulwark of our island.

John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher

You must be ruthless, relentless, and remorseless! Sack the lot!

John “Jacky” Fisher

Sarah Gadon

My grandmother is British. She was in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force during World War II. That's where she met my grandfather, who was sailing for the British Royal Navy. She was a war bride.

Henry A. Kissinger

Leadership is absolutely vital if there are comparable countries which can affect the security of the world you live in. Between Lincoln and Roosevelt's time, America was protected by huge oceans and, in practice, by the British navy. Today, it's different, and the obsession of the Obama administration has been for retrenchment.

Ernest Bevin

What astounds me about the history of the British Navy is how cheaply we have policed the world for 300 years.

John Hawkins

Serve God daily, love one another, preserve your victuals, beware of fire, and keep good company.

One of the reasons that this quotation is particularly interesting is that Hawkins appeared to be a very reverent and moral man and yet he was the person who opened the Slave Trade in England. Queen Elizabeth evidently regarded the opening of the slave-trade as a worthy achievement, for after his second voyage she made Hawkins a knight, giving him for a crest the image of a Negro's head and bust with the arms securely bound. Queen Elizabeth I, for all her virtues as a monarch, was also totally insensitive to the sufferings of the Negro slaves. Two hundred years thereafter, other English politicians and leaders would take the world lead in abolishing the slave trade.

Richard Attenborough

If you've ever seen the film In Which We Serve, but it was about a destroyer in the Mediterranean.

John C. Calhoun

I am impressed with the belief that our naval force ought not to cost more in proportion than the British. In some things they may have the advantage, but we will be found to have equally great in others.

David McCullough

Housetops were covered with 'gazers'; all wharves that offered a view were jammed with people ... As British officers happily reminded one another, it was the largest fleet ever seen in American waters. In fact it was the largest expeditionary force of the 18th century, the largest, most powerful force ever sent forth by Britain or any other nation.

Winston Churchill

We cannot menace the peace of a single continental hamlet no matter how great our supreme navy may become but the … whole fortunes of our race and empire … would perish and be utterly swept away if our naval supremacy were to be impaired. It is the British navy which makes Great Britain a great power.

This quotation illustrates several historical differences of the past with today. To be a world superpower, one had to have a dominant navy. Yet that navy was, in Churchill’s concept, a defensive system. It could protect the nation from invasion, and its merchant ships on the seas, but a navy provided no threat to invade towns and villages in Europe or elsewhere. Germany and France in contrast, with their large armies could invade other nations and menace Europe and Asia. It also illustrates why the navy and the army were considered completely separate departments of government in that they had different functions. The early American government had a Navy Department and Secretary but no Secretary of the Army or standing army.

Reginald Drax

The British Navy has achieved, practically without fighting, all that a Navy has ever been expected to perform.

In the first year of WWI, the British Fleet kept the German Fleet bottled up in port. As a result, the British had a very successful sea embargo against the Germans who rarely challenged the British fleet even though they had some major, powerful, capital ships. See {642234}. Meanwhile, the German ships were in no position to harass much less destroy Allied (French, Russian or English) shipping.

William Whipple

In my opinion the greatest advantage we can at present expect from our Navy; for at this early period We can not expect to have a Navy to cope with the British.

Winston Churchill

The only traditions of the Royal Navy are rum, sodomy and the lash.

George Canning

The sacred spell of the invincibility of the British navy was broken

Erik Larson

Room 40 knew a U-boat was heading south to Liverpool - knew the boat's history; knew that it was now somewhere in the North Atlantic under orders to sink troop transports and any other British vessel it encountered; and knew as well that the submarine was armed with enough shells and torpedoes to sink a dozen ships.

Horatio Nelson

A fleet of British ships at war are the best negotiators.

William Falconer

The head of a ship however has not always an immediate relation to her name, at least in the British navy.

Graham Chapman

There is no cannibalism in the British navy, absolutely none, and when I say none, I mean there is a certain amount.

British Navy Quotes