Before 1885 there were only two ways of getting into the Royal Navy. A boy's wealthy parents could pay fees and have their son trained as an officer. The other route was by being sent from an orphanage or a reformatory and getting the training free of charge. If you were honest and poor boy you stood no chance of receiving any sea training from the Royal Navy until you were fifteen.

To rectify his unsatisfactory situation Charles Hoare bought a barque, the Illova, renaming it Mercury. It was used as a training ship (T.S.) and provided sea training for 100 boys. In 1892 the ship was moved to the River Hamble and moored off Mr Hoare's house, where additional land based classrooms were built.

After the death of Charles Hoare there seemed to be no funding to run the ship until his friend C.B. Fry, a man who had represented his country in cricket, athletics and football, took the matter into his hands to raise enough funds to keep the training establishment going. Mrs Fry even sold her set of pearls to pay for a theatre which was a scaled down model of the famous Wagner theatre 'Bayreuth'. Clara Butt, the famous prima donna once sang at the Mercury Theatre.