HMS Dolphin shore-establishment

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The seventeenth Royal Navy 'ship' to be named HMS Dolphin was the the RN shore establishment sited at Fort Blockhouse in Gosport. Dolphin was the home of the Royal Navy Submarine Service from 1904 to 1999, and location of the Royal Navy Submarine School.

[edit] Closure of submarine base

HMS Dolphin closed as a submarine base on 30 September 1998, although the last RN submarine permanently based at Gosport was HMS Ursula which had left 4 years earlier in 1994. The Royal Navy Submarine School (RNSMS) remained at Dolphin until 23 December 1999 when it closed prior to relocation to HMS Raleigh. The RNSMS staff marched into HMS Raleigh and were welcomed onboard by Commodore Lockwood on 31 January 2000. The RNSMS is located in the Dolphin and Astute blocks at Raleigh, although the Submarine Escape Training Tank (SETT), a 30m deep tank of water used to instruct all RN submariners in pressurised esacpe, remains at the same site, now renamed Fort Blockhouse.