The Royal Navy at one stage offered to man the new landships because the Army did not want them. That proposal connects with an early rationale for the Royal Naval Division and shows how a naval institution became involved in a weapon intended for land warfare. The idea went beyond the nautical language of the Landships Committee. Had the arrangement continued, Britain's armored arm might have developed under naval personnel and traditions into the Second World War. Ownership of an experimental technology can remain unsettled until one service accepts it.
Notable Point · 45:37-46:20
When the Royal Navy nearly crewed the landships
A humorous counterfactual rests on a serious institutional point: the Royal Navy was considered as the organization that might crew Britain's first tanks.