The photograph above shows the sloops, HMS Modeste and HMS Nereide, just after their joint launch on 29th January 1944
Early trials took place off Sheerness in January 1912 when Lieutenant Charles Samson made the first take off from a British ship flying a Short ‘pusher' biplane from a track built over the forward turret and forecastle of the battleship Africa. A naval air station was built on the other bank of the Medway at Kingsnorth on the Hoo peninsula and throughout the First World War the men of the Royal Naval Air Service were borne on the books of HMS Pembroke, the Chatham naval barracks.
