Admiralty (United Kingdom) in the context of "Royal Naval Air Service"

Captain James Cook (7 November 1728 – 14 February 1779) was a British Royal Navy officer, explorer, and cartographer who led three voyages of exploration to the Pacific and Southern Oceans between 1768 and 1779. He completed the first recorded circumnavigation of the main islands of New Zealand, and led the first recorded visit by Europeans to the east coast of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands.

Cook joined the British merchant navy as a teenager before enlisting in the Royal Navy in 1755. He first saw combat during the Seven Years' War, when he fought in the Siege of Louisbourg. Later in the war he surveyed and mapped much of the entrance to the St. Lawrence River during the Siege of Quebec. In the 1760s he mapped the coastline of Newfoundland and made important astronomical observations which brought him to the attention of the Admiralty and the Royal Society. This acclaim came at a pivotal moment in British overseas exploration, and it led to his commission in 1768 as commander of HMS Endeavour for the first of his three voyages.

Samuel Pepys FRS (/ˈpiːps/ PEEPS; 23 February 1633 – 26 May 1703) was an English writer and Tory politician. He served as an official in the Navy Board and Member of Parliament, but is most remembered today for the diary he kept for almost a decade. Though he had no maritime experience, Pepys rose to be the Chief Secretary to the Admiralty under both Charles II and James II through patronage, diligence, and his talent for administration. His influence and reforms at the English Admiralty were important in the early professionalisation of the Royal Navy.

The detailed private diary that Pepys kept from 1660 until 1669 was first published in the 19th century and is one of the most important primary sources of the Stuart Restoration. It provides a combination of personal revelation and eyewitness accounts of great events, such as the Great Plague of London, the Second Anglo-Dutch War and the Great Fire of London.

The Fleet Air Arm (FAA) is the naval aviation component of the United Kingdom's Royal Navy (RN). The FAA is one of five RN fighting arms. As of 2023 it is a primarily helicopter force, though also operating the F-35B Lightning II carrier-based stealth fighter jointly with the Royal Air Force.

The RAF was formed by the 1918 merger of the RN's Royal Naval Air Service with the British Army's Royal Flying Corps. The FAA did not come under the direct control of the Admiralty until mid-1939. During the Second World War, the FAA operated aircraft on ships as well as land-based aircraft that defended the Royal Navy's shore establishments and facilities.

Horse Guards Road (or just Horse Guards) is a road in the City of Westminster. Located in post code SW1A 2HQ, it runs south from The Mall down to Birdcage Walk and Great George Street, roughly parallel with Whitehall and Parliament Street.

To the west of the road is St James's Park. To the east, between Horse Guards Road and Whitehall, are various government buildings, including the five interconnected Admiralty buildings. The Old Admiralty (Ripley) Building, the oldest of the government offices, was completed in 1726. The Horse Guards building, completed in 1759, originally housed barracks and government offices. Adjacent to the Horse Guards building is a large courtyard, Horse Guards Parade, where the annual Trooping the Colour ceremony is held in the presence of the reigning monarch.

The Navy Department was a former ministerial service department of the British Ministry of Defence responsible for the control and direction of His Majesty's Naval Service. It was established on 1 April 1964 when the Admiralty was absorbed into a unified Ministry of Defence, where it became the Navy Department. Political oversight of the department originally lay with the Minister of Defence for the Royal Navy (1964–1967) it then passed to the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Royal Navy (1967–1981), then later to the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Armed Forces (1981–1990), and finally the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (1991–1997).

The department's military head was the First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff (1964–1997), who was responsible for managing the day-to-day operations of the department. Following restructuring in 1997, the individual Navy Department was abolished and its functions were transferred to the new Royal Navy (now Navy) operational branch of the Ministry of Defence.

The Mulberry harbours were two temporary portable harbours developed by the British Admiralty and War Office during the Second World War to facilitate the rapid offloading of cargo onto beaches during the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944. They were designed in 1942 then built in under a year in great secrecy; within hours of the Allies creating beachheads after D-Day, sections of the two prefabricated harbours were towed across the English Channel from southern England and placed in position off Omaha Beach (Mulberry "A") and Gold Beach (Mulberry "B"), along with old ships to be sunk as breakwaters.

The Mulberry harbours solved the problem of needing deepwater jetties and a harbour to provide the invasion force with the necessary reinforcements and supplies, and were to be used until major French ports could be captured and brought back into use after repair of the inevitable sabotage by German defenders. Comprising floating but sinkable breakwaters, floating pontoons, piers and floating roadways, this innovative and technically difficult system was being used for the first time.

The War Office has referred to several British government organisations throughout history, all relating to the army. It was a department of the British Government responsible for the administration of the British Army between 1857 and 1964, at which point its functions were transferred to the new Ministry of Defence (MoD). It was equivalent to the Admiralty at that time, which was responsible for the Royal Navy (RN), and (much later) the Air Ministry, which oversaw the Royal Air Force (RAF). The name 'Old War Office' is also given to the former home of the department, located at the junction of Horse Guards Avenue and Whitehall in central London. The landmark building was sold on 1 March 2016 by HM Government for more than £350 million, on a 250-year lease for conversion into a luxury hotel and residential apartments.

Prior to 1855, 'War Office' signified the office of the Secretary at War. In the 17th and 18th centuries, a number of independent offices and individuals were responsible for various aspects of Army administration. The most important were the Commander-in-Chief of the Forces, the Secretary at War, and the twin Secretaries of State; most of whose military responsibilities were passed to a new Secretary of State for War in 1794. Others who performed specialist functions were the controller of army accounts, the Army Medical Board, the Commissariat Department, the Board of General Officers, the Judge Advocate General of the Armed Forces, the Commissary General of Muster, the Paymaster General of the forces, and (particularly with regard to the Militia) the Home Office.