Word Finder - fleet

definition

A group of vessels or vehicles.

definition

Any group of associated items.

definition

A large, coordinated group of people.

definition

A number of vessels in company, especially war vessels; also, the collective naval force of a country, etc.

definition

(British Royal Navy) Any command of vessels exceeding a squadron in size, or a rear admiral's command, composed of five sail-of-the-line, with any number of smaller vessels.

There's a fleet of nice ladies at the courthouse that are always happy to help.

The fleet sailed in May 1787, and arrived off the Australian coast early in the following January.

Buenos Aires was in 1838 blockaded by a French fleet; but Rosas stood firm.

Memnon the Rhodian, now in supreme command of the Persian fleet, saw the European coasts exposed and set out to raise Greece, where discontent always smouldered in Alexander's rear.

There are other indications, too, of the importance of the Aeginetan fleet in the Greek scheme of defence.

John Smith's Indians had a fleet of dugouts.

In the south the chief city was exposed to the British fleet.

The enemy's fleet, which subsequently did not let a single boat pass, allows his entire army to elude it.

Feverish attempts were made to remedy the lack of warlike stores, but difficulty was experienced on account of the fleet blockading the entrance to the river.

Land was probably acquired for a military post and store depot at Woolwich in 1667, in order to erect batteries against the invading Dutch fleet, although in 1664 mention is made of storehouses and sheds for repairing ship carriages.

He returned on the eve of the abolition of the Shogunate, and followed Enomoto (q.v.) when the latter, sailing with the Tokugawa fleet to Yezo, attempted to establish a republic there in defiance of the newly organized government of the emperor.

To afford a home for the centralized activities of the Union, the Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street, London, was built on the site of the Fleet prison - soil consecrated by sacrifice for conscience under Elizabeth - and opened in 1875.

From that time a fleet was despatched every year, and the company's operations greatly increased geographical knowledge of India and the Eastern Archipelago.

In 1583 Jan Hugen van Linschoten made a voyage to India with a Portuguese fleet, and his full and graphic descriptions of India, Africa, China and the Malay Archipelago must have been of no small use to his countrymen in their distant voyages.

On the 6th of May 1615 Spilbergen entered the Pacific Ocean, and touched at several places on the coast of Chile and Peru, defeating the Spanish fleet in a naval engagement off Chilca.

On the 1st of March the Dutch fleet sighted the island of Juan Fernandez; and, having crossed the Pacific, the explorers sailed along the north coast of New Guinea and arrived at the Moluccas on the 17th of September 1616.

In 1738 John Elton traded between Astrakhan and the Persian port of Enzeli on the Caspian, and undertook to build a fleet for Nadir Shah.

But a romantic interest attaches to the wreck of the " Wager," one of Anson's fleet, on a desert island near Chiloe, for it bore fruit in the charming narrative of Captain John Byron, which will endure for all time.

As a punishment, on the 18th, of October 1775, the town was bombarded and burned by a British fleet.

Agrippa made the fine natural harbour into the main naval station of the Mediterranean fleet, and founded a colony there probably in 31 B.C. The emperor Tiberius died in his villa here.

Its importance lasted until the decline of the fleet in the 4th century A.D.

There is a fishing fleet, for which a new harbour was opened in 1892.

If any one nation, he said, were able to back the strongest fleet with an overwhelming army, the whole world would be in jeopardy.

He announced a complete reorganization of the navy, which was to be grouped in four fleets, three being for home defence, based on home ports (the third being the Atlantic fleet previously based on Gibraltar), and the fourth, based on Gibraltar, to operate either in home waters or in the Mediterranean.

On Monday, July 20, at Spithead, there was a great review by the King of the most powerful fleet ever assembled, numbering some 200 vessels in all, manned by 70,000 officers and men.

In the ordinary course the fleet would have been demobilized at the close of the week; but with the outlook so disturbed, the First Lord and the First Sea Lord (Prince Louis of Battenberg, afterwards Lord Milford Haven) took the responsibility of keeping it on a war footing, ready for action.

Hence, when the rupture occurred, the fleet was already at its stations in the North Sea, and Adml.

The German battle cruiser " Goeben " eluded the British Mediterranean fleet and got safely into the Sea of Marmora; three British cruisers were sunk by submarines in the North Sea; and a British squadron under Adml.

On the other hand Athens, like Corinth, Megara and Argos, was sufficiently far from the sea to enjoy security against the sudden descent of a hostile fleet.

In 483 Themistocles overcame the opposition of Aristides, and passed his famous measure providing for a large increase of the Athenian fleet.

After a vain attempt to expel the garrison in 287, the Athenians regained their liberty while Macedonia was thrown into confusion by the Celts, and in 279 rendered good service against the invaders of the latter nation with a fleet off Thermopylae.

One of the entrances to Theobalds Park is the old Temple Bar, removed from Fleet Street, London, in 1878.

An attack on the neighbouring town of Tamsui failed, but a semi-blockade of the island was maintained by the French fleet during the winter and spring of 1884-1885.

In 1595 San Juan was unsuccessfully attacked by an English fleet under Sir Francis Drake; two years later another English force, led by Sir George Cumberland, occupied the city for some weeks.

The city was attacked in 1625 by a Dutch fleet, which was easily repulsed.

Fishing for herring and mackerel is carried on and the town equips a large fleet for the codbanks of Newfoundland and Iceland.

Had the tsar been satisfied with this important success, which enabled him to rebuild Sevastopol and construct a Black Sea fleet, his reign might have been a peaceful and prosperous one, but he tried to recover the remainder of what - had been lost by the Crimean War, the province of Turkish Bessarabia and predominant influence in Turkey.

About this time an attack upon the city was made by the Achinese fleet, under the raja of Pedir in Sumatra; and Xavier's early biographers relate a dramatic story of how he roused the governor to action.

It contains the "Descrypcion of the towre of Virtue and Honour," an elegy on Sir Edward Howard, lord high admiral of England, who perished in the attack on the French fleet in the harbour of Brest in 1513.

At length under Augustus it suddenly rose into importance, when that emperor selected it as the station for his fleet on "the upper sea."

The Ostrogoth collected a fleet and established a severe blockade, which at length caused Odoacer to surrender the city.

He superintended the gunnery training and prepared a new drill-book for the fleet.

When it was known that Admiral Cervera, with a Spanish fleet, had left the Cape Verde Islands, Sampson withdrew a force from the blockade to cruise in the Windward Passage, and made an attack upon the forts at San Juan, Porto Rico.

After narrowly escaping capture by Manfred's fleet he reached Rome safely, where he was crowned king of the Two Sicilies.

Charles determined to subjugate the island and sailed with his fleet for Messina.

In the meanwhile Ruggiero di Lauria appeared before Naples and destroyed another Angevin fleet commanded by Charles's son, who was taken prisoner (May 1284).

The legions at once joined him; numbers of Franks enlisted in his service; an increased and well-equipped fleet secured him the command of the neighbouring seas.

In 289 Maximian attempted to recover the island, but his fleet was damaged by a storm and he was defeated.

In 292 Constantius Chlorus besieged and captured Gessoriacum (hitherto in possession of Carausius), together with part of his fleet and naval stores.

In 1809 the town was again captured by the Russians; and, when in 1812 it was assigned to them by the Bucharest peace, they chose it as the central station for their Danube fleet.