HMS Vectis (D51) HMS Vectis (D51) HMS "Vectis" (D51) was a V-class destroyer of the British Royal Navy that saw service in World War I and the Russian Civil War. "Vectis", the first Royal Navy ship of the name, was ordered in July 1916. She was laid down by J. Samuel White at Cowes, Isle of Wight and launched on 4 September 1917. She was completed on 5 December 1917. V- and W-class destroyers like "Vectis" were assigned to the Grand Fleet or Harwich Force for the rest of World War I. In early June 1918, "Vectis" conducted towing trials with the NS-class
Britain (place name) Britain, after which "Britain" became the more commonplace name for the island called Great Britain. After the Anglo-Saxon period, "Britain" was used as a historical term only. Geoffrey of Monmouth in his pseudohistorical "Historia Regum Britanniae" ("c." 1136) refers to the island of Great Britain as "Britannia major" ("Greater Britain"), to distinguish it from "Britannia minor" ("Lesser Britain"), the continental region which approximates to modern Brittany, which had been settled in the fifth and sixth centuries by Celtic migrants from the British Isles. The term "Great Britain" was first used officially in 1474, in the instrument drawing up the proposal