British Adoption of Radio Communication

The Royal Navy first mentioned "promising" experiments in "Electric Signalling" in Defiance with the cooperation of Marconi in its Annual Report of the Torpedo School in 1896, mentioning the promise that "torpedo boats might indicate their approach or proximity to friendly ships." The details of these "Experiments with Wireless Telegraphy" were amplified in a four page appendix to the Annual Report of the Torpedo School in 1897, a feature that repeated and grew to six and then nine pages in length until the 1900 edition, where the topic merited its own section where coverage exploded to 42 pages. The era of communication beyond visual ranges was blossoming.

By the time of the Great War, the Royal Navy had a patchy global network of shore stations able to offer a modicum of command and control with its ships. The ships carried radios and aerials whose range and power varied with their size and the era.

Early Experiments

In 1896, Defiance was able to transmit Morse code over short distances at a slow rate and then worked with Signor Marconi who had more fully developed and sensitive gear answering to the same principle. The transmitter created sparks and thus radio energy between two large balls ¹⁄₂₅ inch apart in a bag of oil. More code rates of eight words were reached, and Marconi suggested that a radius of ten miles was feasible with a little work.

In 1897, the experiments by H. B. Jackson of telegraphy "without connecting wires" were outlined in the Torpedo School's Annual Report.