Portsmouth enrols 23,000 students and is ranked among the world's best modern universities. Portsmouth is also the birthplace of author Charles Dickens and engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The Romans built Portus Adurni, a fort, at nearby Portchester in the late third century. The city's Old English name "Portesmuða" is derived from "port", meaning a haven, and "muða", the mouth of a large river or estuary. The "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" has a warrior called Port and his two sons killing a noble Briton in Portsmouth in 501. Winston Churchill, in his "A History of the English-Speaking Peoples", says that Port was a pirate
HMS Saracen (1812) HMS Saracen (1812) HMS "Saracen" was launched in 1812 at Portsmouth for the British Royal Navy. She had an active, though brief, naval career during which she captured a number of enemy-held islands and enemy vessels. The navy sold her in 1819 and new owners employed her as a whaler for two voyages between 1819 and 1826. She was apparently wrecked in 1828 off the coast of Chile, but with little or no loss of life. The Royal Navy commissioned "Saracen" in August 1812 under Commandeer John Harper. All he had available to him were his marines and "a few