Pacific Station

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The Pacific Station, often referred to as the Pacific Squadron, was one of the geographical divisions into which the Royal Navy divided its world-wide responsibilities.

It was established in the early nineteenth century to support British interests along the North American coast and into the Pacific Ocean, during a time of friction with the United States. Originally based at Valparaiso, Chile, the ships of the Pacific Station were based out of the Esquimalt Royal Navy Dockyard at Esquimalt, in British Columbia, Canada. After a period of relaxing tensions meant that British interests in British Columbia were secured, the station was maintained to counter Russian ambitions in the Pacific. The Station was also crucial in defending British Columbia from United States aggression during the Spanish-American War and the contemporaneous Alaska Boundary Dispute, when the US threatened to forcibly invade and annex British Columbia if its demands over Alaska were not met.

By the end of the nineteenth century, improved communications, the signing of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance and the need to concentrate warships in British waters to counter the developing German High Seas Fleet, meant that the station was closed down in 1905 and its facilities and base of operations at Esquimalt, British Columbia were transferred to the newly-minted Royal Canadian Navy. Its responsibilities were divided between the China, Australia and the America and West Indies Stations.