[11] The harbour was built between 1849 and 1872 when the Royal Navy created a breakwater made of blocks from local quarries on the Isle of Portland.

[12] With the amelioration of Anglo-French relations, and the German challenge towards 1900, the need for a Channel Formation diminished and the main European naval arena shifted to the North Sea.

The novel Billy Budd by Herman Melville is set on board ships of the Channel Fleet, in the immediate aftermath of the Spithead and Nore mutinies of 1797.

In the novel The War of the Worlds, the Channel Fleet protects the huge mass of refugee ships escaping from the Essex coast in the face of the Martian onslaught.

The initial heroic fight of HMS Thunder Child and the subsequent general engagement, is detailed in the chapter entitled "The Thunderchild".