
Contents
1 Particular skills: warrant officers in the Royal Navy, 1775–1815
Get access-
Published:February 2019
Cite
Abstract
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
Personal account
- Sign in with email/username & password
- Get email alerts
- Save searches
- Purchase content
- Activate your purchase/trial code
- Add your ORCID iD
Purchase
Our books are available by subscription or purchase to libraries and institutions.
Purchasing informationMonth: | Total Views: |
---|---|
October 2022 | 7 |
November 2022 | 3 |
December 2022 | 2 |
February 2024 | 1 |
August 2024 | 1 |
September 2024 | 3 |
January 2025 | 1 |
February 2025 | 3 |
Get help with access
Institutional access
Access to content on Oxford Academic is often provided through institutional subscriptions and purchases. If you are a member of an institution with an active account, you may be able to access content in one of the following ways:
IP based access
Typically, access is provided across an institutional network to a range of IP addresses. This authentication occurs automatically, and it is not possible to sign out of an IP authenticated account.
Sign in through your institution
Choose this option to get remote access when outside your institution. Shibboleth/Open Athens technology is used to provide single sign-on between your institution’s website and Oxford Academic.
If your institution is not listed or you cannot sign in to your institution’s website, please contact your librarian or administrator.
Sign in with a library card
Enter your library card number to sign in. If you cannot sign in, please contact your librarian.
Society Members
Society member access to a journal is achieved in one of the following ways:
Sign in through society site
Many societies offer single sign-on between the society website and Oxford Academic. If you see ‘Sign in through society site’ in the sign in pane within a journal:
If you do not have a society account or have forgotten your username or password, please contact your society.
Sign in using a personal account
Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members. See below.
Personal account
A personal account can be used to get email alerts, save searches, purchase content, and activate subscriptions.
Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members.
Viewing your signed in accounts
Click the account icon in the top right to:
Signed in but can't access content
Oxford Academic is home to a wide variety of products. The institutional subscription may not cover the content that you are trying to access. If you believe you should have access to that content, please contact your librarian.
Institutional account management
For librarians and administrators, your personal account also provides access to institutional account management. Here you will find options to view and activate subscriptions, manage institutional settings and access options, access usage statistics, and more.