Alarmed by reports of French preparations on the Mediterranean coast, Lord Spencer at the Admiralty sent a message to Vice-Admiral Earl St. Vincent, commander of the Mediterranean Fleet based in the Tagus River, to despatch a squadron to investigate.

In May 1902 he was passed fit for sea duty and was appointed captain of the cruiser HMS Juno in June, spending two months in exercises with the Channel Fleet under Admiral Sir Arthur Wilson before joining the Mediterranean fleet.

Ethel decided not to be left behind so rented the Capua Palace on Malta, home port of the Mediterranean Fleet, where she became part of the island's high society.

He was posted to the battleship HMS Revenge in the Mediterranean Fleet in January 1923.

He was posted to the battleship HMS Centurion in the Reserve Fleet in 1926 and became Assistant Fleet Wireless and Signals Officer of the Mediterranean Fleet under the command of Admiral Sir Roger Keyes in January 1927.

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.

Mountbatten arrives on board HMS Glasgow at Malta to assume command of the Mediterranean Fleet, 16 May 1952After India, Mountbatten served as commander of the 1st cruiser squadron in the Mediterranean Fleet and, having been granted the substantive rank of vice admiral on 22 June 1949, he became Second-in-Command of the Mediterranean Fleet in April 1950.

He then went on to serve as Fourth Sea Lord at the Admiralty from June 1950 to April 1952 and then returned to the Mediterranean to serve as Commander-in-Chief, Mediterranean Fleet from June 1952.

* 1893 – The Royal Navy battleship accidentally rams the British Mediterranean Fleet flagship which sinks taking 358 crew with her, including the fleet's commander, Vice-Admiral Sir George Tryon.

He then spent six months on HMS Alexandra, flagship of the Mediterranean Fleet, as signal sub-lieutenant.

Promoted to commander in June 1891, he joined the Mediterranean Fleet at Malta on HMS Sans Pareil in March 1892.

However, he was wrecked on HMS Victoria when it collided with HMS Camperdown ( the flagship of the Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet, Vice-Admiral Sir George Tryon ) off Tripoli on 22 June 1893 ; the Admiral, 21 officers and 350 men drowned.

During the 1st century BC the Armenians in what had been Urartu established the powerful Armenian kingdom under Tigran who reigned throughout much of eastern Anatolia between the Caspian, Black Sea and Mediterranean.

The title had its origin in the monasteries of Egypt and Syria, spread through the eastern Mediterranean, and soon became accepted generally in all languages as the designation of the head of a monastery.

Because Arius and his followers had great influence in the schools of Alexandria — counterparts to modern universities or seminaries — their theological views spread, especially in the eastern Mediterranean.

This seems to have been encouraged by exports and influence from the Middle-East and eastern Mediterranean where deliberate production of brass from metallic copper and zinc ores had been introduced.

Disraeli had been considering a political career as early as 1830, before he departed England for the Mediterranean.

In northern Europe, new technological innovations such as the heavy plough and the three-field system were not as effective in clearing new fields for harvest as they had been in the Mediterranean because the north had poor clay soil, and the potato, otherwise ideal for Northern Europe, was an American crop unknown in Europe at the time.

The battle was the climax of a naval campaign that had ranged across the Mediterranean during the previous three months, as a large French convoy sailed from Toulon to Alexandria, carrying an expeditionary force under General Napoleon Bonaparte.

According to archaeological evidence, cultures in Egypt ( hieroglyphs ), the Near East ( cuneiform )— and the Mediterranean, with the Mycenaean culture ( Linear B )— had viable writing systems.

The site lay astride the land route from Europe to Asia and the seaway from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, and had in the Golden Horn an excellent and spacious harbour.

By the late Bronze Age, however, a series of treaties had established safe passage for merchants around the Eastern Mediterranean, spreading from Minoan Crete and Mycenae in the northwest to Elam and Bahrain in the southeast.

West Cornwall, around Mount's Bay, was traditionally thought to have been visited by metal traders from the eastern Mediterranean During the first millennium BC trade became more organised, first with the Phoenicians, who settled Gades ( Cadiz ) around 1100 BC, and later with the Greeks, who had settled Massilia ( Marseilles ) and Narbo ( Narbonne ) around 600 BC.

By the time the siege ended in May 1094, El Cid had carved out his own principality on the coast of the Mediterranean.

Before the war, Carthage had the most powerful navy in the western Mediterranean.

* 1656-In a letter to Councillor General Montagu ( afterwards Earl of Sandwich ), General-at-sea and one of the Protector's personal friends, Cromwell mentioned the necessity of securing a permanent base at the entry of the Mediterranean, preferably Gibraltar ( the first suggestion for the occupation of Gibraltar as a naval base had been made at an English Council of War held at sea on 20 October 1625 ).

Initially a kingdom, the Roman Republic was founded in 509 BC, and would grow steadily over the next several centuries until it had supplanted Greek culture as the dominant Mediterranean civilization.

After outmaneuvering the natives, who had tried to prevent his crossing, Hannibal evaded a Roman force marching from the Mediterranean coast by turning inland up the valley of the Rhône.

The voyages were made in very small ships, mostly the caravel, a light and maneuverable vessel that used the lateen sail which had been the prevailing rig in Christian Mediterranean navigation since late antiquity.

Despite adopting this style, and that the Vandals maintained their sea-power and their hold on the islands of the western Mediterranean Sea, Huneric did not have the prestige that his father Genseric had enjoyed with other states.

In 1749, Reynolds met Commodore Augustus Keppel, who invited him to join HMS Centurion, of which he had command, on a voyage to the Mediterranean.

One of the most spectacular features of Justinian's reign was the recovery of large stretches of land around the Western Mediterranean basin which had slipped out of Imperial control in the 5th century.

The terrible and violent dislocation of the 3rd century meant that the Eastern Mediterranean had become the economic locus of the Empire.

The Norse had a strong sense of naval architecture, and during the early medieval period they were advanced for their time, compared to other European nations ( earlier shipbuilding techniques, for example those of Mediterranean peoples, such as ancient Greece and Rome, were far more sophisticated and varied, especially in terms of joinery ).

In 1217, Alfonso had captured the Kingdom of Murcia, on the Mediterranean coast south of Valencia, for his father, King Alfonso IX, thereby unifying the kingdoms of Castile and León, bringing together the northern half of the Iberian Peninsula under one Christian throne.

The long-necked Pandura had previously been a quite common variety of the lute in the Mediterranean.

The etymology is uncertain, but a strong candidate has long been some word related to the Biblical פוך ( pūk ), " paint " ( if not that word itself ), a cosmetic eye-shadow used by the ancient Egyptians and other inhabitants of the eastern Mediterranean.

Former emphasis on presumed race, in which John A. Scott could write an article on Achaean blondness, compared to the dark locks of " Mediterranean " Poseidon, on the basis of hints in Homer, has been laid aside.

As part of the only passage between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, the Bosporus has always been of great commercial and strategic importance.

Post-Roman imported pottery has been excavated from many sites across the region, and the apparent surge in late 5th century Mediterranean and / or Byzantine imports is yet to be explained satisfactorily.

Egypt has been one of the leading recipients among the Mediterranean partners in terms of total funds received from the MEDA programme, the principal financial instrument of the European Union for the implementation of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership.

While some similar frescoes have been found in other locations around the Mediterranean basin, particularly in Egypt and Morocco, their origins are subject to speculation.

Wine and olive oil have always been a central part of it and the spread of grapes and olive trees in the Mediterranean and further afield is correlated with Greek colonization.

" Antioch, a coastal city in northern Syria and the third largest in the Roman world, is often mentioned as this later home of the Matthean community, but it could have been any large city in the eastern Mediterranean with large Jewish and Christian populations, and recent research points towards a location near Galilee or Judea.

This view has been rejected since, as saltpeter does not appear to have been used in warfare in Europe or the Middle East before the 13th century, and is totally absent from the accounts of the Arabs, the foremost chemists of the Mediterranean world, before the same period.

However, on May 8, 2010, a sighting of a gray whale was confirmed off the coast of Israel in the Mediterranean Sea, leading some scientists to think they might be repopulating old breeding grounds that have not been used for centuries.

Its origins can be thought to have been with the Zanclean flood of 5. 33 million years ago, described in more detail under Mediterranean basin.

Many techniques have been used to create steel ; Mediterranean ones differ dramatically from African ones, for example.