The Royal Hospital School gallery
'The Cradle of the Navy'
Please note: This gallery may occasionally be closed. Please see Latest visitor information for all details of closures.
Location: Queen's House basement, west side
The Royal Hospital School at Greenwich was Britain's largest school of navigation and seamanship.
From 1821 to 1933 it occupied the Queen's House and the other buildings that are now the National Maritime Museum, but its history and relationship with Greenwich go back much further.
The Royal Hospital School moved from Greenwich to its current home in Holbrook, near Ipswich, in 1933.
Origins
King William III and Queen Mary II founded the Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich in 1694. Its Royal Charter included provision for the 'Maintenance and Education of the Children of [Royal Naval] Seamen happening to be slain or disabled'. The Hospital itself – now the Old Royal Naval College – was built from 1696 to 1751, and served as a home for naval veterans until 1869.
| 1715 | The School began when the Hospital took in ten 'orphans of the sea', who were educated at Thomas Weston's Academy in Greenwich. Boys were educated in navigation, for the merchant service. |
| 1758 | The Hospital built its own school on King William Walk. This was replaced by a larger building in 1782. |
| 1798 | The British Endeavour, an orphanage school, was founded in Paddington for children made fatherless by the French Revolutionary War. |
| 1806 | The British Endeavour was granted the Queen's House, Greenwich, and was renamed the Royal Naval Asylum. Extensions were begun in 1807 to house 700 children, both boys and girls. |
| 1821 | The Asylum and Hospital School were amalgamated under Hospital control and known informally as the 'Royal Hospital Schools'. The Upper School continued to teach boys navigation. The Lower School trained others to become seamen and girls for domestic service. |
| 1841 | The girls' school was closed as part of general reforms. |
| 1892 | The title of 'Greenwich Royal Hospital School' was officially adopted. |
Life at the Royal Hospital School
From 1841 boys were accepted into the School on the understanding that they would then join the Royal Navy or Royal Marines. They entered between the ages of five and 12. On arrival they were given a medical check and assigned a number, a group (named after a famous admiral) and a nautical uniform. They were then given a bed and locker in one of the 50-bed dormitories.
The school day
The school was run with military precision. In the summer of 1870 the routine was:
| 05.00 | Pupils were woken and given three minutes to make their beds before a visit to the outdoor (unheated!) swimming pool in the grounds. |
| 08.00 | Breakfast: a jam-jar of cocoa and bread and butter or dripping. |
| 09.00 | Lessons began. These included history, science, geography and arithmetic. The school also had its own observatory as an aid to teaching navigation. |
| 12.00 | Company drill. |
| 12.45 | Pupils would march to dinner, where a thousand or so crammed into the dining hall for a meal, invariably consisting of roast beef. |
| 14.00 | The afternoons were spent in classes or learning useful trades including shoemaking, carpentry and laundry. Meanwhile senior pupils were taught seamanship. |
| 17.00 | Teatime: more cocoa and bread and butter. Free time followed. |
| 19.00 | Further classes |
| 20.00 | Bedtime |