A panorama of Portsmouth harbour, with a flagship of the Red Squadron making sail as she departs

Portsmouth, principal home of the Royal Navy for many centuries, was the largest naval establishment in the world for much of the long period of British supremacy at sea. Site of the first naval dockyard in Britain begun in 1540, although an important fleet anchorage long before then, the main dockyard was expanded time and again throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Countless famous ships were built there and, in peace and war, the size and scale of its facilities dominated the naval scene for many generations.