HMS Temeraire: Named After the Ship Turner Made Famous

A Ship Better Known From a Painting Than a Battle

The name Temeraire has an unusual pedigree among Royal Navy shore establishments, since it is arguably more famous today for a painting than for anything the ship herself did in combat. HMS Temeraire, a 98-gun second-rate warship, fought at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, playing a real and valued part in Nelson's victory, but it is her final journey, decades later, that secured her lasting fame.

When the by-then obsolete ship was towed up the Thames to Rotherhithe in 1838 to be broken up, the scene was captured by J.M.W.

Turner in his painting The Fighting Temeraire, Tugged to Her Last Berth to Be Broken Up, a work that has gone on to be regarded as one of the most beloved paintings in British art, evoking the poignant passing of the age of sail.

A Sporting Tradition Older Than the Name Itself

The Royal Navy's physical training and sporting establishment in Portsmouth traces its own tradition back to 1910, decades before it was ever formally commissioned under the Temeraire name, which only arrived in 1971.

Since then, HMS Temeraire has served as the base for the Directorate of Naval Physical Training and Sport, the establishment responsible for keeping the fleet fit and for organising the Royal Navy's competitive sporting life, a role considerably less glamorous than gunnery or navigation training but no less essential to a service that has always placed real emphasis on physical fitness and team sport as part of naval discipline and morale.

Still Named After a Ship That Never Fired a Shot There

It is a nicely fitting piece of naval tradition that an establishment devoted to fitness, competition and sport should carry the name of a ship whose greatest legacy is a work of art about quiet, dignified decline rather than glory in battle, a reminder that the Royal Navy has always been just as willing to commemorate an old ship's final, unglamorous journey as its finest hour under fire.

Today HMS Temeraire continues to provide sporting and physical training facilities in Portsmouth as part of the naval base's wider support network, carrying forward, in its own modest way, a tradition of naval fitness considerably older than the establishment's own name.