Photo: AP

The announced British budget cuts will slash spending across the board but will hit the Royal Navy hardest of all of the military services.

Anchors away: Britain’s once-proud navy falls prey to budget cuts

In all the carnage, the worst damage, at least to the island’s national pride, is the torpedoing of the Navy. For a kingdom defined by its sea battles, heroes, and ships, Britain is witnessing a humiliating shrinkage of its once-world-conquering maritime force. In the next five years, it will lose four ships (bringing the total to 19), 5,000 personnel (down to 30,000), and perhaps, most ignominiously, will soon have two aircraft carriers with no aircraft to outfit them.

In a final appeal to the National Security Council, navy chiefs offered to make cuts that would reduce the senior service to its smallest since the time of Henry VIII.

“The perception seems to be that we don’t need a navy,” said Duncan Redford, a professor in the Maritime Studies Department at the University of Exeter, who said he feared the cuts would leave the Royal Navy significantly weaker and less flexible.

The severity of the cuts has caused on analyst to wonder, “Is This the End of the English Navy?“