Chatham Navy Week Official Guide and Souvenir August 1, 3 & 8 (1936)
 
In August 1927, nearly 50,000 people flocked to Portsmouth to attend the first Navy Week. Showcasing the power and prestige of the Royal Navy, battleships, cruisers, destroyers, mine-laying monitors, submarines, and an aircraft carrier were all either on view or available for close inspection. Attendees saw HMS Rodney and HMS Nelson, the two most modern and powerful battleships in the world, and were able to examine HMS Hood, the largest, heaviest, and fastest warship for its size in the world for much of its existence. While the ‘towering steel walls’ and ‘wonders of the giant warships’ attracted much interest at Navy Weeks, so too did the recently restored HMS Victory, Admiral Horatio Nelson’s flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar. The annual celebration of Navy Weeks demonstrates that popular, cultural, and symbolic manifestations of the ‘cult of the navy’ still undoubtedly had resonance in a period of supposed naval decline and hostility towards militarism.
 
Navy Weeks represented a ‘naval theatre’ where ‘tradition, power and claims to the sea were demonstrated to both domestic and foreign audiences’. The event’s origins can be traced to the annual Trafalgar Orphan Fund procession pageants and flag days, which were held in Portsmouth from 1920. The Fund’s purpose was to raise money for orphans of naval men who had lost their lives in the First World War. Yet, many felt that the spectacle of the Navy annually appealing for funds by pageants and flag days was unworthy of the Senior Service. Navy Weeks were a far less objectionable method of raising money. First staged as an ‘experiment’ at Portsmouth, then extended to Plymouth and Chatham the following year, Navy Weeks were held between 1927–1938 and allowed members of the public to be brought into direct touch with the work and life of the Royal Navy.
 
A very rare Souvenir Guide
 
Soft Cover
84 Pages
In Fair to Good Condition