Young gentlemen is an archaic term that was used in the Royal Navy to refer to boys aspiring to become commissioned officers, but who had not necessarily reached the rank of midshipmen. Until promotion to lieutenant, these boys would serve in various ratings, and the term was used to group all these boys together. A similar term today would be officer candidates or cadets.
In the 18th-century Royal Navy, rank and position on board ship was defined by a mix of two hierarchies, an official hierarchy of ranks and a conventionally recognized social divide between gentlemen and non-gentlemen. [1] Boys aspiring to a commission were often called 'young gentlemen' instead of their substantive rating to distinguish their higher social standing from the ordinary sailors. [2] [3] Boys would join the navy around the age of 12 and they would serve as a servant for one of the officers, as a volunteer, or as a seaman. After about three years, they would be promoted to midshipman.
'Young gentlemen' was also used as a synonym for midshipmen. [4] Occasionally, a midshipman would be posted aboard a ship in a lower rating such as able seaman but would eat and sleep with his social equals in the cockpit. [5] Horatio Nelson served as an able seaman aboard HMS Seahorse. [5] HMS Bounty was limited to two midshipman posts, but it carried several boys who would have been rated as midshipmen aboard other ships, including Peter Heywood, and George Stewart, who was mustered as an able seaman but served as acting master's mate after Fletcher Christian was promoted to acting lieutenant. [6]
A midshipman is an officer of the lowest rank in the Royal Navy, United States Navy, and many Commonwealth navies. Commonwealth countries which use the rank include Canada, Australia, Bangladesh, Namibia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Pakistan, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and Kenya.
The United States Merchant Marine is an organization composed of United States civilian mariners and U.S. civilian and federally owned merchant vessels. Both the civilian mariners and the merchant vessels are managed by a combination of the government and private sectors, and engage in commerce or transportation of goods and services in and out of the navigable waters of the United States. The Merchant Marine primarily transports domestic and international cargo and passengers during peacetime, and operate and maintain deep-sea merchant ships, tugboats, towboats, ferries, dredges, excursion vessels, charter boats and other waterborne craft on the oceans, the Great Lakes, rivers, canals, harbors, and other waterways. In times of war, the Merchant Marine can be an auxiliary to the United States Navy, and can be called upon to deliver military personnel and materiel for the military.
Edward Bransfield was an Irish sailor who became an officer in the British Royal Navy, serving as a master on several ships, after being impressed into service in Ireland at the age of 18. He is noted for his participation in several explorations of parts of Antarctica, including a sighting of the Trinity Peninsula in January 1820.
Sub-lieutenant is usually a junior officer rank, used in armies, navies and air forces.
Edward Riou FRS was an officer of the Royal Navy who served during the French Revolutionary Wars under several of the most distinguished naval officers of his age and won fame and honour for two incidents in particular.
Seafaring is a tradition that encompasses a variety of professions and ranks. Each of these roles carries unique responsibilities that are integral to the successful operation of a seafaring vessel. A ship's crew can generally be divided into four main categories: the deck department, the engineering department, the steward's department, and other. The reasoning behind this is that a ship's bridge, filled with sophisticated navigational equipment, requires skills differing from those used on deck operations – such as berthing, cargo and/or military devices – which in turn requires skills different from those used in a ship's engine room and propulsion, and so on.
A boy seaman is a boy who serves as seaman or is trained for such service.
The Royal Naval Academy was a facility established in 1733 in Portsmouth Dockyard to train officers for the Royal Navy. The founders' intentions were to provide an alternative means to recruit officers and to provide standardised training, education and admission. In 1806 it was renamed the Royal Naval College and in 1816 became the Royal Naval College and the School for Naval Architecture. It was closed as a training establishment for officer entrants in 1837.
A naval surgeon, or less commonly ship's doctor, is the person responsible for the health of the ship's company aboard a warship. The term appears often in reference to Royal Navy's medical personnel during the Age of Sail.
The master, or sailing master, is a historical rank for a naval officer trained in and responsible for the navigation of a sailing vessel.
A passed midshipman, sometimes called as "midshipman, passed", is a term used historically in the 19th century to describe a midshipman who had passed the lieutenant's exam and was eligible for promotion to lieutenant as soon as there was a vacancy in that grade.
Hugh Pigot was an officer in the Royal Navy. Through his connections and their patronage, he was able to rise to the rank of captain, despite apparently poor leadership skills and a reputation for brutality. Writing in 1826 William James stated, "...he has been described to us by those who knew him well, as one of the most cruel and oppressive captains belonging to the British navy." While he was captain of HMS Hermione (1782), he eventually provoked his men to mutiny. This mutiny, became the bloodiest in the history of the Royal Navy and left Pigot and nine other officers dead. The Navy hunted down and executed a number of the mutineers and recaptured his ship from the Spanish, to whom the mutineers had turned it over.
Master's mate is an obsolete rating which was used by the Royal Navy, United States Navy and merchant services in both countries for a senior petty officer who assisted the master. Master's mates evolved into the modern rank of sub-lieutenant in the Royal Navy, while in the merchant service they evolved into the numbered mates or officers.
A captain's clerk was a rating, now obsolete, in the Royal Navy and the United States Navy for a person employed by the captain to keep his records, correspondence, and accounts. The regulations of the Royal Navy demanded that a purser serve at least one year as a captain's clerk, so the latter was often a young man working his way to a purser's warrant. He had high status, with an office on the quarterdeck or upper deck on most ships. He was paid at the same rate as a midshipman in 1800, but by 1815 he had almost the same monthly pay as a standing warrant officer. On large ships, he had his own cabin in the gunroom, but on smaller vessels he lived with the midshipmen on the orlop deck.
Midshipman ordinary, or midshipman-by-order, refers to an obsolete rating for prospective officers in the British Royal Navy. The rating was specifically applied to graduates of the Royal Naval Academy who had earned their sea time in a classroom instead of serving at sea.
Midshipman extraordinary originally referred to an officer in the Royal Navy below the rank of post-captain who was paid as a midshipman until he could find another ship. Later it referred to a rating for graduates of the Royal Naval College in Portsmouth, who could not find a post as a midshipman.
Royal Navy ranks, rates, and uniforms of the 18th and 19th centuries were the original effort of the Royal Navy to create standardized rank and insignia system for use both at shore and at sea.
The complement of HMS Bounty, the Royal Navy ship on which a historic mutiny occurred in the south Pacific on 28 April 1789, comprised 46 men on its departure from England in December 1787 and 44 at the time of the mutiny, including her commander Lieutenant William Bligh. All but two of those aboard were Royal Navy personnel; the exceptions were two civilian botanists engaged to supervise the breadfruit plants Bounty was tasked to take from Tahiti to the West Indies. Of the 44 aboard at the time of the mutiny, 19 were set adrift in the ship's launch, while 25, a mixture of mutineers and detainees, remained on board under Fletcher Christian. Bligh led his loyalists 3,500 nautical miles to safety in the open boat, and ultimately back to England. The mutineers divided—most settled on Tahiti, where they were captured by HMS Pandora in 1791 and returned to England for trial, while Christian and eight others evaded discovery on Pitcairn Island.
William Peckover was a gunner in the Royal Navy and served on several vessels, most notably several commanded by James Cook or William Bligh.
John Henry Martin was a Royal Navy officer who served during the American Revolutionary and French Revolutionary wars. In March 1776, Martin joined HMS Discovery as an able seaman for James Cook's third expedition. He was promoted twice during the voyage, finishing as a lieutenant aboard HMS Resolution. His rank was confirmed on his return to England, and in that capacity, he commanded the bomb vessel HMS Explosion at the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801.
