area+naval+commander

1 command (rango).

2 command headquarters (edificio).

3 police station (de policía). (Mexican Spanish)

4 command office, commander's office, headquarters, commander's jurisdiction.

5 commandership.

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► nombre femenino

1 (grado) command

2 (edificio) headquarters plural

3 (zona) area under a commander's jurisdiction

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1) (=función) command

2) (=grado) rank of major

3) (=central) headquarters pl

4) (=zona) area under a commander's jurisdiction

5) Méx police station

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1) ( edificio) command headquarters (sing o pl); ( territorio) command

2) (RPl) ( mando) command

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1) ( edificio) command headquarters (sing o pl); ( territorio) command

2) (RPl) ( mando) command

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A (edificio) command headquarters ( sing o pl); (territorio) command

comandancia de marina naval command

B ( RPl) (mando) command

ejercía la comandancia del ejército he was in command of the army, he commanded the army

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comandancia nf

1. [rango] command

2. [edificio] command headquarters

3. Méx [comisaría] police station

* * *

1 distrito command

2 ( cuartel) command headquarters sg o

3 Méx

police station

* * *

comandancia nf

1) : command headquarters

2) : command

SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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At the conclusion of his apprenticeship at the Royal Dockyard, Portsmouth, Biles entered the Royal School of Naval Architecture, South Kensington, London; as it was absorbed by the Royal Naval College, he graduated from Greenwich to the Naval Construction Branch, first at Pembroke and later at the Admiralty. From the outset of his professional career it was apparent that he had the intellectual qualities that would enable him to oversee the greatest changes in ship design of all time. He was one of the earliest proponents of the revolutionary work of the hydrodynamicist William Froude.

In 1880 Biles turned to the merchant sector, taking the post of Naval Architect to J. \& G. Thomson (later John Brown \& Co.). Using Froude's Law of Comparisons he was able to design the record-breaking City of Paris of 1887, the ship that started the fabled succession of fast and safe Clyde bank-built North Atlantic liners. For a short spell, before returning to Scotland, Biles worked in Southampton. In 1891 Biles accepted the Chair of Naval Architecture at the University of Glasgow. Working from the campus at Gilmorehill, he was to make the University (the oldest school of engineering in the English-speaking world) renowned in naval architecture. His workload was legendary, but despite this he was admired as an excellent lecturer with cheerful ways which inspired devotion to the Department and the University. During the thirty years of his incumbency of the Chair, he served on most of the important government and international shipping committees, including those that recommended the design of HMS Dreadnought, the ordering of the Cunarders Lusitania and Mauretania and the lifesaving improvements following the Titanic disaster. An enquiry into the strength of destroyer hulls followed the loss of HMS Cobra and Viper, and he published the report on advanced experimental work carried out on HMS Wolf by his undergraduates.

In 1906 he became Consultant Naval Architect to the India Office, having already set up his own consultancy organization, which exists today as Sir J.H.Biles and Partners. His writing was prolific, with over twenty-five papers to professional institutions, sundry articles and a two-volume textbook.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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Following early education at Devonport, White passed the Royal Dockyard entry examination in 1859 to commence a seven-year shipwright apprenticeship. However, he was destined for greater achievements and in 1863 passed the Admiralty Scholarship examinations, which enabled him to study at the Royal School of Naval Architecture at South Kensington, London. He graduated in 1867 with high honours and was posted to the Admiralty Constructive Department. Promotion came swiftly, with appointment to Assistant Constructor in 1875 and Chief Constructor in 1881.

In 1883 he left the Admiralty and joined the Tyneside shipyard of Sir W.G. Armstrong, Mitchell \& Co. at a salary of about treble that of a Chief Constructor, with, in addition, a production bonus based on tonnage produced! At the Elswick Shipyard he became responsible for the organization and direction of shipbuilding activities, and during his relatively short period there enhanced the name of the shipyard in the warship export market. It is assumed that White did not settle easily in the North East of England, and in 1885, following negotiations with the Admiralty, he was released from his five-year exclusive contract and returned to public service as Director of Naval Construction and Assistant Controller of the Royal Navy. (As part of the settlement the Admiralty released Philip Watts to replace White, and in later years Watts was also to move from that same shipyard and become White's successor as Director of Naval Construction.) For seventeen momentous years White had technical control of ship production for the Royal Navy. The rapid building of warships commenced after the passing of the Naval Defence Act of 1889, which authorized directly and indirectly the construction of around seventy vessels. The total number of ships built during the White era amounted to 43 battleships, 128 cruisers of varying size and type, and 74 smaller vessels. While White did not have the stimulation of building a revolutionary capital ship as did his successor, he did have the satisfaction of ensuring that the Royal Navy was equipped with a fleet of all-round capability, and he saw the size, displacement and speed of the ships increase dramatically.

In 1902 he resigned from the Navy because of ill health and assumed several less onerous tasks. During the construction of the Cunard Liner Mauretania on the Tyne, he held directorships with the shipbuilders Swan, Hunter and Wigham Richardson, and also the Parsons Marine Turbine Company. He acted as a consultant to many organizations and had an office in Westminster. It was there that he died in February 1913.

White left a great literary legacy in the form of his esteemed Manual of Naval Architecture, first published in 1877 and reprinted several times since in English, German and other languages. This volume is important not only as a text dealing with first principles but also as an illustration of the problems facing warship designers of the late nineteenth century.

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SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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McNeill was born in Clydebank just outside Glasgow, and was to serve that town for most of his life. After education at Clydebank High School and then at Allan Glen's in Glasgow, in 1908 he entered the shipyard of John Brown \& Co. Ltd as an apprentice. He was encouraged to matriculate at the University of Glasgow, where he studied naval architecture under the (then) unique Glasgow system of "sandwich" training, alternately spending six months in the shipyard, followed by winter at the Faculty of Engineering. On graduating in 1915, he joined the Army and by 1918 had risen to the rank of Major in the Royal Field Artillery.

After the First World War, McNeill returned to the shipyard and in 1928 was appointed Chief Naval Architect. In 1934 he was made a local director of the company. During the difficult period of the 1930s he was in charge of the technical work which led to the design, launching and successful completion of the great liners Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth. Some of the most remarkable ships of the mid-twentieth century were to come from this shipyard, including the last British battleship, HMS Vanguard, and the Royal Yacht Britannia, completed in 1954. From 1948 until 1959, Sir James was Managing Director of the Clydebank part of the company and was Deputy Chairman by the time he retired in 1962. His public service was remarkable and included chairmanship of the Shipbuilding Conference and of the British Ship Research Association, and membership of the Committee of Lloyd's Register of Shipping.

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(NATO)

   Portugal joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949, as a founding member. Besides complementing the Atlantic orientation of Portugal's foreign and defense policies, this membership also supported the country's close relationship with two leading members of NATO, Great Britain and the United States. Portugal's slight contribution to NATO in the first decades after joining was conditioned mainly by the fact that Portugal's primary concern was in defending its colonial empire, Portuguese India (1954-61) and in conducting several colonial wars in its African empire in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea- Bissau (1961-74). One contentious question during this phase of Portugal's membership was the extent to which Portugal used NATO-issued equipment to fight those wars in Africa and Asia, since several of these colonial territories were neither on the Atlantic nor in NATO's jurisdiction (Mozambique and Portuguese India).

   The perceived strategic value of Portugal's key Atlantic archipelagos, the Azores and Madeiras, constituted Portugal's primary contribution to NATO and neutralized any U.S. ambivalence about the question of Portugal's NATO membership. The usefulness of Azores' air and naval bases, especially Lajes base at Angra do Heroísmo, Terceira Island, Azores, along with bases in continental Portugal and in the Madeira Islands, trumped international criticism of Portugal's colonial action and influenced American policy toward Portugal. This remained the situation until after the Yom Kippur war, an Arab-Israeli conflict, in October 1973, when Portugal, despite the risks to her energy supplies, gave the United States permission to use Azores bases for resupplying Israel.

   The Revolution of 25 April 1974 had an impact on Portugal's relationship to NATO. Leftist forces in Portugal were now in command, and Portuguese NATO delegates did not attend highly sensitive NATO defense briefings. But by 1980, after moderate military forces had ousted the radical leftists, Portugal's NATO roles returned to the routing. One of NATO's major subordinate commands became IBERLANT (Iberian Atlantic Command), under SACLANT (Supreme Commander Atlantic), located at Norfolk, Virginia. IBERLANT is located at Oeiras, Portugal and, in 1982, the IBERLAND commander for the first time was a Portuguese Vice Admiral. That same year, Spain joined NATO and, until 1986, when Spain decided not to join NATO's integrated military structure, Portugal was anxious that Portuguese commanders not be subordinate to Spanish commanders in NATO. As a key leader of IBERLANT, along with the representative units of Great Britain and the United States, Portugal's forces remain responsible for surveillance and patrolling of the area from central Portugal to the straits of Gibraltar.

   Portugal has made symbolic if modest contributions to NATO's mission in the Balkan conflicts beginning in the late 1990s and in Afghanistan since 2001. Among Portugal's contributions has been the service of medical units in Afghanistan.

    See also Armed forces; Great Britain; United States of America.

SUBJECT AREA: Ports and shipping

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Educated at Dumbarton Grammar School, Robert Napier had been destined for the Church but persuaded his father to let him serve an apprenticeship as a blacksmith under him. For a while he worked in Edinburgh, but then in 1815 he commenced business in Glasgow, the city that he served for the rest of his life. Initially his workshop was in Camlachie, but it was moved in 1836 to a riverside factory site at Lancefield in the heart of the City and again in 1841 to the Old Shipyard in the Burgh of Govan (then independent of the City of Glasgow). The business expanded through his preparedness to build steam machinery, beginning in 1823 with the engines for the paddle steamer Leven, still to be seen a few hundred metres from Napier's grave in Dumbarton. His name assured owners of quality, and business expanded after two key orders: one in 1836 for the Honourable East India Company; and the second two years later for the Royal Navy, hitherto the preserve of the Royal Dockyards and of the shipbuilders of south-east England. Napier's shipyard and engine shops, then known as Robert Napier and Sons, were to be awarded sixty Admiralty contracts in his lifetime, with a profound influence on ship and engine procurement for the Navy and on foreign governments, which for the first time placed substantial work in the United Kingdom.

Having had problems with hull subcontractors and also with the installation of machinery in wooden hulls, in 1843 Napier ventured into shipbuilding with the paddle steamer Vanguard, which was built of iron. The following year the Royal Navy took delivery of the iron-hulled Jackall, enabling Napier to secure the contract for the Black Prince, Britain's second ironclad and sister ship to HMS Warrior now preserved at Portsmouth. With so much work in iron Napier instigated studies into metallurgy, and the published work of David Kirkaldy bears witness to his open-handedness in assisting the industry. This service to industry was even more apparent in 1866 when the company laid out the Skelmorlie Measured Mile on the Firth of Clyde for ship testing, a mile still in use by ships of all nations.

The greatest legacy of Robert Napier was his training of young engineers, shipbuilders and naval architects. Almost every major Scottish shipyard, and some English too, was influenced by him and many of his early foremen left to set up rival establishments along the banks of the River Clyde. His close association with Samuel Cunard led to the setting up of the company now known as the Cunard Line. Napier designed and engined the first four ships, subcontracting the hulls of this historic quartet to other shipbuilders on the river. While he contributed only 2 per cent to the equity of the shipping line, they came back to him for many more vessels, including the magnificent paddle ship Persia, of 1855.

It is an old tradition on the Clyde that the smokestacks of ships are made by the enginebuilders. The Cunard Line still uses red funnels with black bands, Napier's trademark, in honour of the engineer who set them going.

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See also: Fairbairn, William; Thomson, Sir William