From the mid 18th century, it was the world’s most powerful navy until the Second World War. The Royal Navy played a key part in establishing and defending the British Empire.
The British Navy scored its greatest victories largely because it was better organized, better financed and better equipped than its enemies. For this, Pepys gets much of the credit. In the Elizabethan era, ships were thought of as little more than transport vehicles for troops.
Henry VIII built a fleet of fighting ships armed with large guns and created a naval administration. Under Elizabeth I the navy developed into England’s major defense and became the means by which the British Empire was extended around the globe. … The Sovereign of the Seas, an English galleon of the Anglo-Dutch Wars.
Personnel losses
The Royal Navy lost 50,758 men killed in action, 820 missing in action and 14,663 wounded in action. The Women’s Royal Naval Service lost 102 killed and 22 wounded.
Really the only odd ducks that immediately come to mind are Cuba and maybe Turkey. Focke-Wulf made the 190. Messerschmitt / Bf made the 109. US Navy was in process of overtaking Britain’s prior to WWII, though a treaty officially made them equals with the Washington Naval Treaty.
The Royal Navy was by far the most powerful of the world’s fleets. It kept the British Isles immune from invasion and was also primed to blockade enemy ports in time of war. Fundamentally, however, its purpose was the protection of trade. … Any threat to Britain’s naval supremacy was a threat to the nation itself.
Why were British so dominant?
There is no doubt that Britain was powerful. It used its wealth, its armies and its navy to defeat rival European countries and to conquer local peoples to establish its empire. … In most of the empire Britain relied heavily on local people to make it work.
At the start of the war in 1939, the Royal Navy was the largest in the world, with over 1,400 vessels.