Southern Song establish the world's first standing navy

1132

Emperor Gaozong established a permanent naval command headquartered at Dinghai with a fleet of hundreds of paddlewheel warships and marines armed with fire-lances and thunder-crash bombs. The standing navy - the first in world history organized as a permanent, professional branch of the military rather than an ad hoc wartime levy - would prove the dynasty's single most effective defense against the Jurchen Jin's repeated attempts at invasion from the north.