HMS Britannia, first ship used to house young officers for training to Dartmouth Beginning in 1863 the training hulks Britannia and Hindostan were moored on the river side of a hilly peninsula called Mount Boone, the majority of which was owned by the estate of Sir Walter Raleigh, who had received the property by Royal Grant from Queen Elizabeth I. Dartmouth's isolation provided an ideal spot to prepare young men for naval service without the distractive temptations of naval ports like Portsmouth and Plymouth. The cleared portions near the top of the Raleigh property were used as playing fields while the waterfront, called "Sandquay" hosted the piers, docks and warehouses needed to service Britannia and Hindostan. And so this went for nearly four decades. Having decided to abandon the hulks for reasons of overcrowding, health and sanitation, and with Dartmouth the preferred location for a purpose-built school, the Admiralty, with the concurrence of Parliament, and after three refusals to sell, compulsorily purchased the land from the unwilling administrators of the Raleigh Estate under the National Defence Act.

The present buildings date from 1905, the architect was Sir George Aston Webb, one of the more distinguished of his day, whose previous commissions included Admiralty Arch and the East Front of Buckingham Palace. The foundation stone was laid by King Edward VII in March 1902 and the first cadets entered the College three years later.

The major impetus for expansion came from accelerating Anglo-German naval rivalry and by 1914 the College, with additional accommodation, classrooms and its own dedicated preparatory school at Osborne on the Isle of Wight, was considerably larger than originally conceived. With the outbreak of hostilities the cadets were mobilised and sent to the Reserve Fleet  where many served with distinction.

When war broke out again in 1939 the cadets remained in the College, although their numbers had been increased previously with the arrival of the Special Entry Scheme - one of whom, Prince Philip of Greece, received the prize for the best cadet and met his future bride, Princess Elizabeth Windsor. The bombing of the College in September 1942 forced a change in training policy and both staff and students were evacuated to Eaton Hall, Cheshire, until the end of the war. The Dartmouth site subsequently became a centre for Combined Operations in the run up to 'D' Day since Dartmouth had become a major advanced amphibious base for American troops and ships preparing for the Normandy landings.

Bomb damage sustained to the quarterdeck in 1942 The Royal Naval College re-opened in September 1946 and although structurally it remained unchanged, the number and character of its courses was greatly expanded. By the mid seventies the number of graduate entrants had significantly increased. HRH The Prince of Wales was a graduate Sub Lieutenant in the Autumn term entry of 1971.

The range of courses continued to expand. Two important new groups of officers came with the arrival of the Special Duties Officers Pre-qualifying Course, St. George, in 1974 and the WRNS Officers' Training Course, Talbot in 1976. The training of female Naval Officers was integrated into that of their male counterparts in 1990 and the Special Duties Officers' Greenwich course moved to Dartmouth in 1996.

Today, Dartmouth with its university quality academic staff has joined with the University of Plymouth and now presents Young Officers with opportunities to lay the educational foundations for University Degrees had they not acquired them before entering Dartmouth.