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Horsea Island was an island located off the northern shore of Portsmouth Harbour, England; gradually subsumed by reclamation, it is now connected to the mainland. Horsea falls within the city of Portsmouth and was wholly owned by the Ministry of Defence as part of the HMS ''Excellent'' shore establishment, which maintains its headquarters on Whale Island. However, in 2013 the south-eastern corner was acquired by Portsmouth City Council for housing development.() Most of the area to the south-west of the lake is part of the Portsmouth Harbour SSSI, the remainder was declared a SINC in 2011. ==History== Horsea was originally two islands, Great and Little Horsea, the former large enough to support a dairy farm. In 1804 a Royal Powder Works was established on Little Horsea in connection with the gunpowder magazine at nearby Tipner; by 1849, however, it was no longer in operation, and no above-ground evidence of the site remains to be seen.〔(English Heritage National Survey of Ordnance Yards and Magazine Depots, pp10-12 )〕 The islands were joined to form a torpedo testing lake in 1889, using chalk excavated from Portsdown Hill, 1 km to the north, by convict labour. A narrow-gauge railway was constructed on the site by the army to distribute the chalk. Although the lake length was increased from to over in 1905, rapid advances in torpedo design and range had made it all but obsolete by World War I. In 1909, the island became the site of one of the Navy's three high-power shore wireless stations, which saw it populated with dozens of tall masts. In the 1950s the lake was used in the testing of improved Martin-Baker Ejection Seats, following catapult launch mishaps on carriers in which Fleet Air Arm aircrew often sustained serious compression injuries to the spine after ejecting from submerged aircraft. After closure of the telegraphy station in the 1960s, the northern part of the island became home to HMS ''Phoenix'', the naval school of firefighting and damage control. The school comprised a number of steel structures called ''trainers'', simulating three decks within a warship. Fires were set in the trainers for the purposes of instruction in various types of firefighting.〔''The Portsmouth Papers'', No. 36: Horsea Island and The Royal Navy. Portsmouth Museums, Portsmouth.〕 The kerosene and water mix burned in the trainers, known as ''sullage'' caused significant water and air pollution and created a health hazard for the staff exposed to the fumes for protracted periods. In 1994 the school moved to a modern gas-fired trainer on Whale Island as part of a consolidation and cost effectiveness initiative. The new facility is known as the Phoenix school of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Defence, damage control and fire fighting. Responsibility for training and site management was contracted out to Flagship Training UK, which was taken over by Vosper Thorneycroft in September 2008. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Horsea Island」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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