Royal Naval College, Osborne Royal Naval College, Osborne The Royal Naval College, Osborne, was a training college for Royal Navy officer cadets on the Osborne House estate, Isle of Wight, established in 1903 and closed in 1921. Boys were admitted at about the age of thirteen to follow a course lasting for six academic terms before proceeding to the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth. Some formal appointments to the college were to HMS "Racer, a vessel attached to the college, previously the tender to HMS "Britannia". Following the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, Osborne House, overlooking the River Medina, where she had spent her
Royal Naval College, Greenwich building. The Navy's Department of Nuclear Science and Technology opened on the college premises in 1959, and JASON, the department's research and training reactor, was commissioned in the King William building in 1962. In 1967 Queen Elizabeth II knighted Francis Chichester on the river steps of the College, honouring his achievement in circumnavigating the world as a solo yachtsman, using the old route of the clippers, becoming the first to do so. His was also the fastest such circumnavigation, taking nine months and one day. The Royal School of Naval Architecture, which had been part of the College since 1873,