Foulness Island passing of the Ministry of Defence Act 1946 and the subsequent rationalisation of five agencies in 1971, ownership of the island passed from the War Office to the Ministry of Defence. In 2003, a contract to manage the testing of munitions was awarded to the defence contractors QinetiQ, and they also control access to the island. In the 1850s, the South Essex Estuary and Reclamation Company proposed a grand scheme to reclaim around of land on the Essex coast, which would have included most of Foulness Sands and Maplin Sands. The civil engineer Sir John Rennie produced the plans, and
Battle off the coast of Abkhazia 12 August 2008. All the naval vessels there, which were Coast Guard Border Police patrol vessels, were mined and exploded. While the war started on Friday August 8, the Black Sea Fleet reportedly arrived off the coast of Georgia on Saturday August 9. While the distance from Sevastopol to Ochamchire is about 400 nautical miles, the Russian convoy (including Moskva, Smetlivyy, Muromets, and Aleksandrovets) sailed from Sevastopol with an assortment of support vessels that could only make 12-16 knots at best. It was suggested that was a 25-hour trip at best, meaning the ships would have departed from Sevastopol almost