page_title: HMNB Portsmouth
section_title: Inter-war years
hierarchical_section_title: HMNB Portsmouth / History / Twentieth century / Inter-war years
caption_attribution_description: Portsmouth Harbour
context_page_description: Her Majesty's Naval Base, Portsmouth is one of three operating bases in the United Kingdom for the Royal Navy. Portsmouth Naval Base is part of the city of Portsmouth; it is located on the eastern shore of Portsmouth Harbour, north of the Solent and the Isle of Wight. Until the early 1970s, it was officially known as Portsmouth Royal Dockyard; thereafter the term 'Naval Base' gained currency, acknowledging a greater focus on personnel and support elements alongside the traditional emphasis on building, repairing and maintaining ships. In 1984 Portsmouth's Royal Dockyard function was downgraded and it was formally renamed the 'Fleet Maintenance and Repair Organisation'. The FMRO was privatized in 1998. Around the year 2000, the designation HMS Nelson was extended to cover the entire base.
  The base is the headquarters for two-thirds of the Royal Navy's surface fleet, and employs up to 17,200 people. The base is also home to a number of commercial shore activities; naval logistics, accommodation and messing; and personnel support functions provided by Defence Equipment and Support.
context_section_description: The period after the war was inevitably a time of contraction at the Dockyard, and there were many redundancies. In accordance with the Government's Ten Year Rule the Dockyard worked over the next decade and a half with a presumption of enduring peace rather than future conflict.
  The majority of warships launched at Portsmouth following the end of the War were cruisers—Effingham in 1921, Suffolk in 1926, London in 1927, Dorsetshire in 1929, Neptune in 1933, and Amphion and Aurora in 1934. There were also four destroyers—Comet and her sister Crusader in 1931, and the flotilla leaders Duncan in 1932 and Exmouth in 1934. The only other vessels launched between the wars were the mining tenders Nightingale in 1931 and Skylark in 1932.
  New Dockyard facilities included a Steel Foundry, built in 1926. The "Semaphore Tower" was opened in 1930, a facsimile of its namesake (1810–24) which had been destroyed in a fire in 1913. The arch beneath incorporates the Lion Gate, once part of the 18th-century fortifications. The original Semaphore Tower nestled between a sizeable pair of buildings: the Rigging Store and Sail Loft (both of 1784) which perished in the same fire; in the end only one of the pair was rebuilt, as a five-storey office block.
caption: The rebuilt Semaphore Tower and adjacent office block (1923–29). The single-storey building in front, dating from 1847, was used for the storage, maintenance and hydraulic testing of chains and cables.[53]
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