Royal Marines Volunteer Cadet Corps

Royal Marines Volunteer Cadet Corps
Royal Marines Volunteer Cadet Corps
Founded 14 February 1901
Country United Kingdom
Role Volunteer Youth Organisation
Size 300 Cadets
Units Plymouth
Lympstone
Portsmouth
Motto(s) Be Worthy
Commanders
Commander VCC Lt Col T Wing RMC
Adjutant RMVCC Capt C Spratt RMC

The Royal Marines Volunteer Cadet Corps (RMVCC) is part of the Royal Navy's Volunteer Cadet Corps. There are units (Divisions) in Arbroath, Lympstone, Portsmouth, and Plymouth.[1]

The RMVCC is exists alongside other Sea Cadets and Royal Marines Cadets as part of the Royal Navy's sponsored cadet organisations.[2]

History

The RMVCC traces its history back to the formation of the Royal Marines Artillery Cadet Corps in the Mission Hall, Prince Albert Street, Eastney on 14 February 1901. The new Cadet Corps was then based at the now closed Royal Marines Eastney Barracks in Portsmouth. It was formed, so the story goes, to "gainfully occupy the spare time of sons of senior Non-Commissioned Officers (SNCOs)" after an occasion when the colonel's office window was broken by a ball kicked by an SNCO's son playing outside.

The RMACC was initially formed with the motto 'Manners Maketh Man', and re-titled as the Royal Marines Volunteer Cadet Corps in the mid-20th century (sometimes also known as the RM Volunteer Boys Corps). Girl Ambulance Corps units existed alongside RMVBC units for some time, and these were merged with the RMVBC after the Second World War, with the current title being adopted by all units in the 1970s. However, RMVCC Portsmouth only accepted girls from the mid-1990s. The RMVCC is also the first military cadet organisation to be titled 'Royal'; indeed, its cadets were 'Royal Marines Cadets' from the date of the organisation's formation (the Marine Cadets of the SCC and CCF have only recently been given this distinction).

Since 1901, units were also formed at:

Deal Division RMVCC closed when the Royal Marines School of Music left the town and moved to HMNB Portsmouth; Chatham Division RMVCC transferred to the Sea Cadet Corps when Pay & Records Royal Marines left Chatham in the 1960s, and Gosport Division RMVCC was disbanded and then re-formed as a non-MOD cadet marching band in the 1970s following the traditions of the Royal Marines Light Infantry but sadly closed again in 2006.

Cadets from the RMVCC have appeared at Navy Days and the Royal Tournament as well as in the 1955 film The Cockleshell Heroes. As of the 6 July 2014, following a tri-partite RMC parade at Buckingham Palace in the presence of HRH The Duke of Edinburgh (Captain General Royal Marines) and in celebration of the 350th anniversary of the formation of the Royal Marines, all RM cadets can be title as Her Majesty's Royal Marines Cadets.

Tragedy struck the RMVCC in the 1951 Gillingham bus disaster when 24 RM Cadets were killed on a foggy December evening whilst marching to watch a boxing tournament.

See also

Other Marine Cadets

References

  1. ↑ "Volunteer Cadet Corps". Royal Navy. Retrieved 16 January 2018.
  2. ↑ "Youths & Cadets". Royal Navy.
  • "Twenty-three Cadets Killed by Bus at Chatham", The Times, 5 December 1951
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