PLYMOUTH
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The Encyclopaedia of Plymouth History


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PLYMOUTH SCHOOL OF NAVIGATION

Under the terms of the Merchant Shipping Act 1854 a local Marine Board was set up in Plymouth.  This consited of the Mayor of the Borough, local ship owners and Naval and Mercantile Marine Officers.  The Board commenced the Plymouth School of Navigation in 1862 at 13½ Gascoyne Place, Plymouth.  The books and apparatus was all supplied by the Board and the local sip owners.

Mr John Merrifield, a keen meteorologist, was appointed as Headmaster and he establsihed a weather station which started to collect data in 1864.

By 1871 some 2,100 Naval and Merchant Officers had received certificates of seamanship after attending the School.

Fishermen were admitted to the School following an Act of Parliament in 1883.

The Plymouth Local Education Authority took over the running of the School in 1908.

It soon outgrew its premises and it moved to the former Durnford Hotel builidng in Durnford Street, Stonehouse.

Attendance slumped following the World economic crisis of 1931 and the following year the Plymouth School of Navigation became part of the Mathematics and Physics Department of the Plymouth and Devonport Technical College, occupying rooms in the Devonport building.  That lasted until 1941, when the School trabsferred in to a single room within the Plymouth Technical College in Tavistock Road.

In 1947 it moved to rooms at the former Stoke Military Hospital.  Owing to increasing numbers it ceased to be a sub-department of the Technical College in 1954 and was created the Department of Navigation.

 

Additional material for this section has been kindly supplied by Mrs Deborah Watson

Copyright:   Brian Moseley, Plymouth, UK

Page created:  30 June 2007

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