HMS Vernon: The Torpedo School That Became a Shopping Centre

Born Afloat, in the Shadow of Jacky Fisher

HMS Vernon began life in 1872 as a torpedo and mining school, a tender to the gunnery establishment HMS Excellent, based aboard the hulk of an old 50 gun fourth rate frigate that had herself been named Vernon back in 1832.

The man generally credited with getting the school off the ground was Commander John Fisher, later the formidable First Sea Lord Jacky Fisher, who ran torpedo and mine training at Excellent in the early 1870s.

Vernon became an independent command in her own right on 26 April 1876, moored in Fountain Lake in Portsmouth Harbour, her floating complex gradually growing over the following decades to include the former frigate Ariadne, the workshop vessel Actaeon, the two decker Donegal, the mighty 121 gun Marlborough, and by 1904 the pioneering ironclad HMS Warrior herself, pressed into service as a floating workshop, power plant and wireless telegraphy school.

It was a notably eclectic flotilla of retired Victorian warships doing quiet, technical work far removed from the glory of the battle line.

Coming Ashore

The gradual move from ship to shore began after the First World War, with the Mining School relocating first to the old Gunwharf site by 1919, the Torpedo and Electrical Schools following soon after.

On 1 October 1923 the establishment was formally reconstituted as a shore base, HMS Vernon, Gunwharf, Portsmouth, and the old hulks that had carried the name for so long were sold for scrap over the following two years, bringing more than half a century of floating tradition quietly to an end.

Teaching the Fleet to Fight With Torpedoes and Mines

Vernon's original purpose was training sailors in the use of the newly adopted Whitehead torpedo, with around thirteen hundred men passing through every year, able seamen completing a four month course before earning the coveted Torpedoman's badge and a corresponding rise in pay, with mandatory refresher courses every three years given how quickly the technology kept moving.

Over time the establishment grew into the Royal Navy's principal centre for mine warfare doctrine and training too, covering contact, magnetic, acoustic and pressure mines, and running courses that stretched from new ratings up to commanding officers, including the demanding cross tide navigation and probability theory needed to sweep influence minefields safely.

A dedicated squadron of Ton class minesweepers and minehunters operated out of Vernon, pioneering new minehunting equipment and remote mine destruction systems, and reportedly among the first small ships in the fleet to use satellite navigation.

The Mine That Changed the War

Vernon's most consequential single achievement came early in the Second World War. On 23 November 1939, a team led by Lieutenant Commander John Ouvry, together with Lieutenant J. E. M. Glenny, Chief Petty Officer C. E. Baldwin and Able Seaman A. L.

Vearncombe, recovered and made safe an intact German magnetic mine from the mudflats at Shoeburyness, the first of its kind to fall into British hands.

The intelligence this dangerous piece of work provided allowed rapid development of degaussing and related techniques to protect ships against magnetic mines, and King George VI personally decorated the team on 19 December 1939, in what are recorded as the first Royal Navy decorations awarded during the entire war.

A Price Paid at Home

The work was not without real danger closer to home, either.

On 6 August 1940, a booby trapped German mine detonated while being stripped down in the mining shed at Vernon itself, killing five men: Commissioned Gunner Reginald Cook, Petty Officer Cecil Fletcher and three able seamen, a sober reminder that the same skill being celebrated in Parliament and the press carried a real and continuing cost for those who practised it.

Mine examination work was subsequently moved to a disused chalk quarry near Buriton, nicknamed HMS Mirtle, for safety.

Portsmouth's heavy wartime bombing also forced much of Vernon's own work to disperse, with the main torpedo, mining and electrical school relocating to Roedean School for Girls in Brighton from May 1941 until June 1945, and further outstations established at Havant, Brixham and Helensburgh on the Clyde.

One frequently repeated claim, that a raid on the main Portsmouth site itself destroyed a building called Dido and killed around a hundred personnel, could not be independently corroborated during research for this article and should be treated as unverified rather than settled fact.

The Home of Naval Diving

Responsibility for naval diving transferred to Vernon's Torpedo Branch on 1 October 1944, and a dedicated Clearance Diving School was formally established there in 1951, unifying training for deep sea and clearance divers alike.

Divers working from the diving support ship HMS Reclaim set genuine deep diving records from Vernon's era, Petty Officer Wilfred Bollard reaching 535 feet in June 1948 and Lieutenant George Wookey reaching 600 feet in October 1956, extraordinary depths for the diving equipment of the day.

Across her long history, personnel trained at or through Vernon are credited with an extraordinary 23 George Crosses and well over a hundred George Medals for bomb and mine disposal work carried out from the Second World War through Suez, the Falklands, the Iran Iraq Tanker War and beyond, a truly remarkable record of quiet, dangerous courage.

It is worth noting for anyone wondering whether the name lives on: naval diving training today is delivered by the Defence Diving School at Horsea Island, administratively under HMS Collingwood, and no evidence could be found that the specific title HMS Vernon Diving remains in current active use.

Closure and a New Life as Gunwharf Quays

HMS Vernon ceased to exist as an independent command on 31 March 1986, absorbed for a time into HMS Nelson, and her remaining functions were gradually wound down through the 1990s, diving training moving to the new Defence Diving School in September 1995 and mine warfare training to HMS Dryad that November, before the site finally closed its gates for the last time on 1 April 1996.

The thirty two acre site was sold on and redeveloped from 1998 by the Berkeley Festival Waterfront Company into Gunwharf Quays, the shopping and leisure development that stands there today, complete with the landmark Spinnaker Tower, completed in 2003.

A handful of genuine heritage survives amid the shops: the Grade II listed Vulcan Building, which actually predates Vernon herself, having been built as an ordnance storehouse in the early 1810s, along with the old main gate, administration building and infirmary, now repurposed as pubs and apartments, and a Mark 8 torpedo and Mark 17 moored mine still on public display.

In 2022, following a public fundraising campaign that raised over a quarter of a million pounds, a dedicated Mine Warfare and Diving Monument, a bronze sculpture depicting divers and a moored mine set in a seawater pool, was formally dedicated on the site, the only national memorial to the Royal Navy's mine warfare community and a fitting acknowledgement of just how much quiet, dangerous work was once carried out where shoppers now walk.