Timeline of the Forton Barracks & HMS St. Vincent.

1713 Wooden built Fortune Naval Hospital opened. Private but under contract to the Admiralty. (Forton is a shortened name of Fortune & has remained so ever since!) 1735 John Jervis was born in Meadford Hall, Staffordshire. 1746-1762 Royal Naval Hospital Haslar built and Fortune’s patients were transferred There. French Prisoners of War were housed here at Fortune! 1755 The French POW transferred to Portchester Castle. American War of Independence Started and those Colonists guilty of treason or piracy were transported here. 1793-1815 Napoleonic War French prisoners were confined here and in hulks in Forton Creek. By 1815 over 4,000 were held but over 1,500 died. Many are buried near The old open air swimming bath on the north side of Forton Creek. 1797 The ‘Board of Ordnance’ purchased the site for the building of a new military Hospital. However, because of the development of Haslar, another hospital was not considered necessary so the plans were changed to a barracks for the Army, and named Forton Barracks. Battle of Cape St. Vincent was fought by (then) Admiral Sir John Jervis. He was given the Title Baron & Earl of St. Vincent as gratitude for his victory. Jervis promotes one Captain Horatio Nelson to Rear Admiral as a reward for his part in the battle. 1801 Earl of St. Vincent promoted to First Lord of the Admiralty. This because of his reforms in both the and the Dockyards. Also creation of the Viscount St. Vincent of Meadford, Staffordshire. 1804 Viscount St. Vincent retires from First Lord of the Admiralty. 1807 Construction of Forton Barracks was completed and various Army units lived here Until 1848. The Parade Ground was reported to be the largest in the Country. 1823 Admiral Earl of St. Vincent dies at the age of 88 on the 13th. March. 1848 Division Royal Marines moved across from Clarence Barracks, Portsmouth. 1859 The Royal Marines were divided into the Light Infantry and the Artillery. The Forton RM became the Portsmouth Division RMLI ‘The Forton Reds’. The Commandants residence (St. Vincent House) and the Officers Mess were built. 1862 HMS St. Vincent was first used as a in Portsmouth harbour, moored on the Gosport side. (Approximately where Gosport Marina is today.) 1865 Three additional accommodation blocks built, the site of the open air swimming Pool was reclaimed from Forton Creek, and Forton Field was purchased. 1904 Construction commenced on what was to become HMS Ganges shore establishment by the building of 20 messes for trainees. 1905 HMS Ganges opens as an operational shore establishment for ‘Boy’ sailors. 1906 HMS St. Vincent, anchored off Gosport beach was decommissioned & Scrapped (for the princely sum of £2000) and the boys transferred to HMS Ganges at Shotley Point. 1906 was a period of considerable change for Naval ‘Boys’ training. On 21 June HMS Ganges was renamed HMS Tenedos III in preparation for her reassignment to become part of the Boy Artificers Establishment at Chatham. She left Shotley establishment on 5 July. Also on 21 June HMS Boscawen (the old HMS Minotaur) was renamed HMS Ganges as her replacement. The establishment was further swelled by the merging of the pupils of the establishments of HMS Boscawen, HMS St Vincent and HMS Caledonia, HMS Boscawen II was renamed HMS Ganges 1914/18 During WW1 the RMLIs strength peaked at 50,000 and approximately 15,000 Men passed through Forton Barracks during their service in the RMLI during WWI

1906/20 Gosport War Memorial Hospital built as a Memorial to the 1,771 members of The RMLI, based at Forton Barracks, who were killed in the 1st World War. A Further 1,800 were wounded. Every survivor member of the RMLI voluntarily Donated 1 day’s pay towards the cost. 1923 On the 22nd June with the amalgamation of the RMLI and the RMA, the RMLI left Here for Eastney Barracks (Portsmouth). 1926 The Admiralty commenced converting Forton Barracks as an overflow (from HMS Ganges) Boys’ Training Establishment. It was proposed to use the name ‘St Vincent’ because a boys’ Training Ship of that name had been in use in Portsmouth Harbour from 1862 – 1906 and the Earl of St Vincent, Admiral Lord Jervis. Jervis was known as a strict disciplinarian who believed in fairness & Was a great believer in training of young seamen? The proposed establishment Could not have had a better name. 1927 On 1st June the first intake of 434 boys arrived from HMS Ganges. (See The silver cup in the museum from that date.) 1933 Arrival & erection of the mast. The lower part came from the German Battleship SMS Baden (scuttled at Scapa in 1918). The topmost part of the mast was from HMS Emperor of India. The upper signal yard came from HMS Calliope. Standing At 118 feet high, the record for an ascent still stands at 68 seconds. 1939 Boys were evacuated to the Isle of Man to their new establishment, the so called Cunningham’s holiday camp which, was commissioned as HMS St. George. Boys From HMS Ganges arrived on the 16th. May 1940. This was partly due to over 125 Boys from HMS St. Vincent losing their lives when the battleship HMS Royal Oak was torpedoed by U47 (Gunther Prien) on the 14th. October 1939 1939-45 Throughout WWII HMS St. Vincent was used as a training centre for trainees of the Fleet Air Arm including pilots, Observers, Telegraphist/Air Gunners & Air Mechanics. Potential Pilots and Observers & other aircrew were trained in general naval skills initially. (Some famous people such as Lawrence Olivier & Ralph Richardson are but two who trained as pilots and passed through the portals of HMS St. Vincent!) During the war a single bomb fell inside the gateway of HMS St. Vincent but there were no casualties. However 11 members of an RAF barrage balloon unit based opposite on St. Vincent’s Forton playing fields were killed by a bomb during a raid on the Admiralty oil depot in Forton Road. During the war & apart from the Fleet Air Arm recruits, HMS St. Vincent was also utilised as an overflow for Naval Barracks in Portsmouth. A signal school was also established and a torpedo training section was added on 22 July 1940. 1946 The ‘Boys’ returned! Captain J.W.M. Eaton DSO, DSC, commanding. (Step- father to actress Shirley Eaton who was ‘The Golden Girl’ in the James Bond film ‘Goldfinger’.) 1966 In May Boy entries were discontinued and HMS St Vincent became an Adult Entry Establishment. 21,512 Boys had entered the Royal Navy through these gates. 1967 Labour Government bans corporal punishment in the Royal Navy against the Admiralty’s wishes!. 1969 HMS St. Vincent was de-commissioned and demolished. (Demolition of such buildings wouldn’t happen today). A few buildings survive today including the front façade which houses the museum. New Entry Drying Rooms, .22 indoor rifle range, Heavy Gun Battery (Now the home to ‘The Gosport Shed’.), 4” Gun Battery (Arts & Crafts) Swimming Pool building (Jervis Gallery), Squash Courts (the roof of which is a Grade II listed as it is a Victorian hammer-beam roof in cast iron.) NAFFI Shop building (The olde Ships Company Dormitory and dining hall) and the Seamanship Block (now Fairport). 1975 St. Vincent School opens. 1987 St. Vincent School becomes St. Vincent Sixth Form College.

The HMS St. Vincent Association maintains the museum and has a very close liaison with the College, its staff and students.