According to the official MOD website, the Royal Navy is made up of five arms. The Surface Fleet, the Fleet Air Arm, the covert Submarine Service, the amphibious Royal Marines, and the civilian fleet central to our effectiveness, the Royal Fleet Auxiliary.

BRITISH NAVY TRADITION

With our rich maritime heritage, in general the Royal Family has been pro Navy and supportive of other marine initiatives such as dealing with toxic plastic waste and conservation issues.

The Duke of Edinburgh, Duke of York, Vice Admiral Timothy Laurence, the Duke of Cambridge and Duke of Sussex have all had military experience, mostly in the Royal Navy.

Many warships and cruise liners have been named after Queen Elizabeth, such as the QEII and Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carrier.

In years gone by Horatio Nelson fought Napoleon's navy, defeating the French fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar.

Today we are allies with France and a member of the United Nations, though we still have a way to go before achieving the aims of the UN to eradicate poverty and hunger and ensure food security as world population continues to grow and agriculture cannot keep pace with the demands of an ever increasing number of human mouths to feed.

Being a small country with limited land mass and population, one way of leveling the playing field is to expand military operations into international waters. With naval power now dependent on air strike capability and guided missiles, aircraft carriers would seem to be the way to go linked to submarines to keep in place a nuclear deterrent.

The world in though changing fast with robotics, drones and autonomous vessels now being a reality. That makes nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers, high value targets, vulnerable to low cost attacks. Impressive though they are, are these just dinosaurs in a more enlightened age.

In a world striving for peace and sustainability and as a player in a global circular economy, we wonder if our Navy tradition is holding us back from true advancement?

What part in all of this our present Royal Family might play is limited, where it is the appointed Government of the day that runs the show, in theory, as per the elected officials that are empowered to steer a course, occupying positions of trust that must be fully accountable after we invaded Iraq on bogus information - simply to quench our thirst for oil energy. As we write true accountability appears to be moving away from our grasp, rather than something we can expect.

ROYALS GALLERY 2018

RULES OF SUCCESSION TO THE BRITISH THRONE

Queen Elizabeth II is the sovereign, and her heir apparent is her eldest son, Charles, Prince of Wales. Next in line after him is Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, the Prince of Wales's elder son. Third in line is Prince George, the eldest child of the Duke of Cambridge, followed by his sister, Princess Charlotte and younger brother, Prince Louis. Sixth in line is Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, the younger son of the Prince of Wales. Under the Perth Agreement, which came into effect in 2015, only the first six in line of succession require the sovereign's consent before they marry; without such consent, they and their children would be disqualified from succession.

The United Kingdom is one of the 16 Commonwealth realms. Each of those countries has the same person as monarch and the same order of succession. In 2011, the prime ministers of the realms agreed unanimously to adopt a common approach to amending the rules on the succession to their respective Crowns so that absolute primogeniture would apply for persons born after the date of the agreement, instead of male-preference primogeniture, and the ban on marriages to Roman Catholics would be lifted, but the monarch would still need to be in communion with the Church of England.

LINKS & REFERENCE

https://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_royal_family

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23272491

https://www.royal.uk/royal-family