Horsea Island - History

History

Horsea was originally two islands, Great and Little Horsea, the former large enough to support a dairy farm. The islands were joined to form a torpedo testing lake in 1889, using chalk excavated from Portsdown Hill, 1 km to the north, by convict labour. A narrow-gauge railway was constructed on the site by the army to distribute the chalk. Although the lake length was increased from 800 yards (730 m) to over 1,000 yards (910 m) in 1905, rapid advances in torpedo design and range had made it all but obsolete by World War I.

In 1909, the island became the site of one of the Navy's three high-power shore wireless stations, which saw it populated with dozens of tall masts. In the 1950s the lake was used in the testing of improved Martin Baker Ejection Seats, following catapult launch mishaps on carriers in which Fleet Air Arm aircrew often sustained serious compression injuries to the spine after ejecting from submerged aircraft.

After closure of the telegraphy station in the 1960s, the northern part of the island became home to HMS Phoenix, the naval school of firefighting and damage control. The school comprised a number of steel structures (:'trainers'), simulating three decks within a warship. Fires were set in the trainers for the purposes of instruction in various types of firefighting. The kerosene and water mix burned in the trainers, known as sullage caused significant water and air pollution and created a health hazard for the staff exposed to the fumes for protracted periods. In 1994 the school moved to a modern gas-fired trainer on Whale Island as part of a consolidation and cost effectiveness initiative. The new facility is known as the Phoenix school of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Defence, damage control and fire fighting. Responsibility for training and site management was contracted out to Flagship Training UK, which was taken over by Vosper Thorneycroft in September 2008.