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Home of Naval History and News

Welcome to the home page of the Navy General Board website! This is your portal to all things navy, whether it be current events or historical topics. You can find a wide range of news stories or historical articles on the website. You can also connect with fellow readers on the website forum.

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History Articles

Navy General Board was created to help share all aspects of naval history from throughout the ages. Here you will find our collection of history articles. It has come a long way and has something for everyone. Take your time and browse them all!

The origins of the Washington Treaty of 1922

It is a century since the world’s leading powers negotiated the ‘Washington Treaty’. This agreement of 6 February 1922 – called the ‘Five Power Treaty’ at the time[1] – required signatories to scrap numerous ships, including some as yet unfinished, dictated strict...

Royal Canadian Navy have they missed an opportunity?

With new vessels on the horizon for the Royal Canadian navy is there something they have missed?

Were the ‘Admirals’ Britain’s first class of battleships?

In an earlier article we explored the story of HMS Collingwood, a British battleship that the Royal Navy’s Director of Naval Construction, Nathaniel Barbaby, sketched in 1880 and which was detailed by his assistant, William White.[1] Collingwood was soon followed by...

Alaska Class : America’s (Not Quite) Battlecruisers

The warships of the Alaska class are perhaps one of the more confusing ships ever put to sea by the United States. Designed to prowl the oceans and hunt down enemy commerce raiders, they possessed high speed and considerable firepower. Vastly more powerfully than...

The slow death of the Lion class – Britain’s never-built battleships

As war clouds loomed over Europe in the late 1930s, Britain’s last generation of battleships were well in hand. By 1938 the five King George V class were under construction and the first two examples of their successors, the Lions, were due to be laid down in 1939.[1]...

Montana Class Battleships : Armor Examination

This will be the first in a new series where we examine the armor schemes of various battleships throughout history. We will start off this series with the never-built American super dreadnoughts, the Montana class battleships. During the Montana class armor post we...

The story behind the battlecruiser HMAS Australia

In March 1909 there was a good deal of around Australia’s major cities about responding to the latest Imperial naval crisis by giving Britain a battleship. At a time when social militarism was a major feature of society the call resonated. It also came on the eve of a...

The story behind ‘The battlecruiser HMS New Zealand: a gift to The Empire’

The story of HMS New Zealand, the battlecruiser that the Dominion of New Zealand gave as a gift to the Empire of Britain in 1909, has been told many times. Often incorrectly. Indeed, the ship is surrounded with mythology. A variety of stories about her origin and...

The pursuit of the Goeben and the battle of the River Plate

The Battle of the River Plate is one of the best known encounters of the Second World War. It was the first major sea battle of that conflict, and it came on 13 December 1939, a time when the so-called ‘phony war’ was in full swing – the brief period when the Second...

USS The Sullivans : Life aboard a US Navy Destroyer

The following article is a collection of stories told to me by my great uncle aboard the warship USS The Sullivans. Please enjoy this collection of tales describing life aboard a US Navy destroyer. Life Aboard the USS The Sullivans (DD-537) Q: What did you do onboard...

Was ‘cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey’ a naval phrase?

The unprecedented cold that swept parts of the United States in early 2019 could be called 'brass monkey weather', though with the temperatures reported, that might be an understatement. According to legend, the term - in full, 'cold enough to freeze the balls off a...

Designing Britain’s oddest looking battleships

In the mid-1880s the British began building two new battleships as part of the so-called ‘Northbrook’ programme, a massive burst of naval expenditure to which government reluctantly agreed in early December 1884. What then emerged from the drawing boards of the...

Battleship Evolution : From the first Dreadnought to the Last

This series on battleships originally began on the Navy General Board Facebook page. It got to be so popular that we combined all of the posts into one article on battleship evolution. In this article we will see how each Navy's first dreadnought differed compared to...

Top 10 Biggest Battleships of All Time

Battleships were the largest warships that utilized gun based weaponry as their main armament. Hundreds of feet in length and displacing tens of thousands of tons, their size allowed them to carry the largest guns and the thickest armor. While battleships are massive...

Admiral Sir John Jellicoe and the Battle of Jutland

It is easy to declare that the Battle of Jutland – to the Germans, the battle of the Skagerrak[1] - fought over a hectic afternoon and night on 31 May-1 June 1916, was a tactical German victory and a strategic British one.  The idea has become a trope in historical...

News and Current Events

A relatively new addition to the Navy General Board website. While we remain focused on sharing history, we also want to examine naval current events that are occuring across the world. This section is still new, but more articles are coming. 

Canada’s Next Generation Submarine

My own opinion and hypothesis on what class of submarine could become Canada’s next generation submarine

China’s Newest Warship : The Type 55 Destroyer

At a time when the United States Navy is struggling to determine the future of its Navy, China has been quietly building up its naval forces. The People’s Liberation Army Navy has risen to be the second largest navy in the world by tonnage. It’s not just quantity that...

The Navy’s FFG(X) Program : Foreign and Domestic Options

The Navy has all but admitted that the Littoral Combat Ships are a flop. Therefore, they have started looking at potential ships to fulfill requirements for a new frigate design known as the FFG(X) Program. Make makes things interesting is that this time the US Navy...

Why China’s Island Bases are Not a Big Deal

Over the past few years, the media has made a big deal of the artificial island bases that China has built in the South China Sea. Several of these islands are well fortified, featuring harbors, airstrips, and formidable land-based weaponry. Some in the media have...

Want to go a little bit further than simply reading an aritcle? Interesting in writing your own and sharing it with Navy General Board? Check out our about us page for information on becoming a guest writer for the Navy General Board website! We are looking for both historical pieces and current events happening with navies across the World. 

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