[3] The college provides education, training, consultancy and research to the international shipping and off-shore oil industries.

[4][5] Aside from a few remaining practical course facilities, the majority of the Warsash campus is now being converted to private housing.

After advice from the Secretary of the Department of Science, Lyon Playfair, it was decided that a School of Navigation should be set up, which would be fitting with the recent development of Southampton as a great seaport.

It was granted university college status and known as the Hartley Institute, based in South Hill in the city of Southampton.

By 1939 there were 19 cadets, 129 day students and 15 staff and the school moved to a new home at South Stoneham House in Swaythling where it remained until 1946.

[10] One accommodation block Shackleton was finished in 1960 and won a Royal Institute of British Architects gold medal.

Previously the college had its own small sized training vessels – Moyana (which, having won the Sail Training Association's first Tall Ships Race from Torbay to Lisbon in 1956 sank without loss of life on her return passage to the UK) and Halcyon which is now privately owned by Halcyon Yacht Charter.

[13] The school was renamed "Warsash Maritime Centre" and went through a period of building expansion which included a new pier, library and engineering block.

[13] It was not until the 1990s that the college would again change dramatically, when in 1996 some of the campus on the eastern side of Newtown road were sold, together with Golf House, Salterns and Hamblemeads, to fund the Andrews Building in Southampton.

It was during this period that Warsash Maritime Centre merged with Southampton Solent University to provide governmental sources of funding.

[4][5] The new facilities were officially opened in January 2018 by HRH Anne, Princess Royal and cadets began transitioning to the new site from 2017, with the move completed by 2019.

Complex and, in real life, potentially hazardous manoeuvres can be practised in safety in the manned models making them a key training tool for the shipping industry.

[14] Alumni are able to join The Warsash Association which has a worldwide membership of 425 (as of February 2011) including overseas branches in Australia and New Zealand.