Manor Beach Cottage, Osea Island

Interesting. Osea Island was in WW I the secret base for the RN's Coastal Motor Boat (CMB) Flotilla. Under Captain "Froggie" French they went on to provide the CMBs and crews for operations in the Baltic in 1919. At least 2 VCs, a handful of DSO's when attacking the Bolshevik Fleet at Kronstadt. Quite an episode. Some good photos of Osea at that time in the book "Operation Kronstadt"
 
Not sure it was really secret, it was the training base for the CMB's. The concrete foundations adjacent to the pier were the slipway for the CMB's, this led into a set of onshore storage sheds that housed quite a number of boats. At Duxford, there is a CMB on display, together with some video of boats being launched at Osea, with the slipway and pier in the video. I think there are some web sites relating to historic sites in Essex that have some more information, e.g.:-

http://wikimapia.org/9908646/CMB-launching-ramps
 
Until recently the hard at Marconi (which was laid by the military originally) just across the river, had rails set into it - apparently for running ordnance down to the waterline for loading onto MTBs
 
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