63rd (Royal Naval) Division

The British 63rd (Royal Naval) Division was a First World War division of the New Army. The division had been formed (at the direction of Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty) at the outbreak of war as the Royal Naval Division. The division was composed largely of surplus reserves of the Royal Navy who were not required at sea, formed around a cadre of Royal Marines.

The division participated in the defence of the Belgian city of Antwerp in late 1914. From Antwerp, 1,500 sailors of the division fled to the neutral Netherlands, where they were interned. The division was shipped to Egypt prior to serving in the Battle of Gallipoli where it fought on both the Anzac and Helles battlefields. By the end of the Dardanelles campaign, casualties were such that the division no longer contained a significant number of naval servicemen and so in July 1916 it was redesignated as the 63rd Division when the original Territorial Force 63rd (2nd Northumbrian) Division was disbanded. The division moved to the Western Front in France for the remainder of the war.