The Lower Deck of the Royal Navy, 1900-39: The Invergordon Mutiny in Perspective.

1982 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 472
Author(s):  
Hugh Cunningham ◽  
Anthony Carew
Keyword(s):  
Royal Navy ◽  
Lower Deck

Reform in the Royal Navy: A Social History of the Lower Deck, 1850-1880.

1977 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 215
Author(s):  
Robert William Love ◽  
Eugene L. Rasor
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Royal Navy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Lower Deck

Reform in the Royal Navy: A Social History of the Lower Deck, 1850 to 1880

1977 ◽  
Vol 82 (5) ◽  
pp. 1253 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert Tucker ◽  
Eugene L. Rasor
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Royal Navy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Lower Deck

Particular skills: warrant officers in the Royal Navy, 1775–1815

2019 ◽  
pp. 29-46
Author(s):  
Evan Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
Social Standing ◽  
Royal Navy ◽  
Prize Money ◽  
Social Prestige ◽  
The Social ◽  
Warrant Officers ◽  
Lower Deck ◽  
Half Decade

Historians of the Royal Navy in the age of sail have focused their attention on two groups of men: the commissioned officers and the lower deck. Few have bothered to study the men in the middle: the warrant officers, whose particular skills were necessary on board. Masters, pursers, chaplains, and surgeons—the warrant officers of wardroom rank—straddled the civilian and military worlds. They therefore provide a unique window into both the Royal Navy’s command structure and the continuing significance and evolution of social status boundaries in Georgian Britain. This paper focuses on warrant officers during the half-decade following the battle of Trafalgar, when British manpower resources were stretched thinly and exhausted from more than a decade of operations. Between 1805 and 1808, the Admiralty enacted a series of reforms designed to alleviate some of these problems. To make a career as a warrant officer more attractive, the reforms granted surgeons uniforms, increased surgeons’, pursers’, and masters’ pay, and gave all of them a larger share of the prize money spoils. The reforms acknowledged, both implicitly and explicitly, that warrant officers sat uncomfortably in the naval hierarchy. They were crucial to the Navy’s operations, but they lacked the social prestige and promotion prospects of commissioned officers. The reforms suggest that naval administrators were finally beginning to recognize the significance and social standing of warrant officers.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document