* 1829 – Charles Fremantle arrives in HMS Challenger off the coast of modern-day Western Australia prior to declaring the Swan River Colony for the United Kingdom.

The depression is named after the British Royal Navy survey ship HMS Challenger, whose expedition of 1872 – 1876 made the first recordings of its depth.

The Summary Report of the HMS Challenger expedition lists radiolaria from the two dredged samples taken when the Challenger Deep was first discovered.

* 1829 – After anchoring nearby, Captain Charles Fremantle of the HMS Challenger, declares the Swan River Colony in Australia.

Significant contributions to oceanographic knowledge were made by the voyages of HMS Beagle in the 1830s, with Charles Darwin aboard ; HMS Challenger during the 1870s ; the USS Tuscarora ( 1873 – 76 ); and the German Gazelle ( 1874 – 76 ).

Challenger was named after HMS Challenger, a British corvette that was the command ship for the Challenger Expedition, a pioneering global marine research expedition undertaken from 1872 through 1876.

* December 21 – HMS Challenger sails from Portsmouth on the 4-year scientific expedition that lays the foundation for the science of oceanography.

The expedition was named after the mother vessel, HMS Challenger.

* HMS Challenger expedition ( Natural History Museum )

* The letters of Joseph Matkin from HMS Challenger ( Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institute of Oceanography )

* Map of the route taken by HMS Challenger ( Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institute of Oceanography )

* Archive entry for journals of Andrew F. Balfour, including three from HMS Challenger voyage ( AIM25 archives )

* The Silent Landscape: the Scientific Voyage of HMS Challenger ( 2003 ), R. M. Corfield, Joseph Henry Press.

* HMS Challenger collection ( Natural History Museum )

* Foraminifera in Brady HMS Challenger Collection ( Foraminifera. eu-Project )

* HMS Challenger Papers, 1872-1876 at Edinburgh University Library ( Archives Hub )

The ridge was discovered during the expedition of HMS Challenger in 1872.

As a result of Stirling's report, Captain Charles Howe Fremantle of HMS Challenger, a 603 ton, 28-gun frigate, was instructed to sail to the west coast of Australia to establish a settlement there.

Challenger 1 Main Battle Tank | tank of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards flying a Saltire from the whip antenna. Royal Navy Westland Sea King | Sea King Mk5 of HMS Gannet SAR Flight | HMS Gannet.

* Evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin's expedition on the HMS Beagle.

* A British Arctic expedition under William Edward Parry comprising HMS Hecla and HMS Griper reaches longitude 112 ° 51 ' W in the Northwest Passage, the furthest west which will be attained by any single-season voyage for 150 years.

* May 19 – HMS Erebus and HMS Terror with 134 men, comprising Sir John Franklin's expedition to find the Northwest Passage, sail from Greenhithe on the Thames.

** Most famously HMS Terror ( 1813 ), sister ship of HMS Erebus and involved in Captain Sir John Franklin's lost expedition through the Arctic

On 24 April 1803, HMS Calcutta, commanded by Captain Daniel Woodriff, with Lieutenant-Colonel David Collins as commander of the expedition, left England accompanied by the store-ship Ocean.

Mylodon was named by Richard Owen on the basis of a nearly complete lower jaw with teeth, which was found by Charles Darwin in a consolidated gravel cliff at Bahía Blanca, during the survey expedition of HMS Beagle.

Two Royal Navy ships have been called HMS Endurance after Sir Ernest Shackleton's Endurance, the ship crushed in the ice of the Weddell Sea during his 1914-1915 Antarctic expedition.

They then sailed around Point Roberts and immediately encountered the HMS Chatham, the second ship of Vancouver's expedition.

Silurians also feature in the Big Finish Productions audio play Bloodtide ( 2001 ), in which the Sixth Doctor intervenes when Charles Darwin and the HMS Beagle expedition encounter a rogue Silurian group in the Galápagos Islands.

The title refers to the second survey expedition of the ship HMS Beagle, which set sail from Plymouth Sound on 27 December 1831 under the command of Captain Robert FitzRoy, R. N ..

King served under Arthur Phillip who chose him as second lieutenant on HMS Sirius for the expedition to establish a convict settlement in New South Wales.

He contracted malaria when the expedition reached Prahsu, about 30 miles from Kumasi, and subsequently died aboard the cruiser HMS Blonde stationed off the coast of Sierra Leone.

On 13 June 1842 he accompanied Pottinger on his expedition up the Yangtze River to Nanking ( Nanjing ), and witnessed the capture of Chinkiang on 21 July and witnessed the signing of the Treaty of Nanking on board the British warship HMS Cornwallis on 29 August 1842.

This degree qualified him for employment in the Naval Medical Service: he joined renowned polar explorer Captain James Clark Ross's Antarctic expedition to the South Magnetic Pole after receiving a commission as Assistant-Surgeon on HMS Erebus.

He was made captain of the battleship HMS Queen on 15 December 1908 until replaced 4 January 1910.

He was appointed Fleet Wireless Officer to the Mediterranean Fleet in August 1931, and having been promoted to commander on 31 December 1932, was posted to the battleship HMS Resolution.

He joined HMS Colossus in April 1886 and was then in charge of the HMS Excellent experimental department from 6 December 1886 to 10 May 1888.

He was appointed Vice-Admiral commanding the Atlantic Fleet on 20 December 1910 and hoisted his flag in HMS Prince of Wales.

On 3 December 1906 the Royal Navy received a new battleship, HMS Dreadnought.

HMS Vanguard entered operational service in December 1994.

* December 5 – The British light cruiser HMS Cassandra strikes a mine and sinks in the Gulf of Finland while aiding Estonia against the Bolsheviks, with eleven sailors killed.

* December 4 – WWII: HMS Nelson is struck by a mine ( laid by ) off the Scottish coast and is laid up for repairs until August 1940.

* December 12 – WWII: HMS Duchess sinks after a collision with HMS Barham off the coast of Scotland with the loss of 124 men.

* December 13 – WWII – Battle of the River Plate: The German pocket battleship, Admiral Graf Spee is trapped by cruisers HMS Ajax, HMNZS Achilles, and HMS Exeter after a running battle off the coast of Uruguay.

* December 6 – WWII: HMS Perseus ( N36 ) is sunk by a mine.

* December 10 – WWII: The British battleship HMS Prince of Wales and battlecruiser HMS Repulse are sunk by Japanese aircraft in the South China Sea north of Singapore.

December 29: HMS Warrior ( 1860 ) | HMS Warrior ( restored ).

* December 29 – The world's first ocean-going ( all ) iron-hulled and armoured battleship, the ( British ) HMS Warrior, is launched.

* December 27 – Charles Darwin embarks on his historic journey aboard the HMS Beagle.

After having been invited by the Driemanschap ( Triumvirate ) of 1813, on 30 November 1813 William disembarked HMS Warrior and landed at Scheveningen beach, only a few metres from the place where he had left the country with his father eighteen years previously, and on 6 December the provisional government offered him the title of King.

In December 1800, Lieutenant James Grant in HMS Lady Nelson, on way from Cape Town to Sydney, sailed through Bass Strait from west to east.

* HMS Hereward was an H-class destroyer of the Royal Navy commissioned on 9 December 1936.