The postwar years have seen many changes in all fighting services as they have adapted themselves to meet the problems of this highly technical age. In the Royal Navy one of the most far-reaching of these changes has been a reorganization of the officer structure, involving, in some cases, a break with principles and traditions that have been followed for many generations.
So vast a reorganization cannot of course be completed overnight. The new design has, however, been decided and the longer term task of bringing it into being is being pressed forward with all possible speed. This is therefore a good moment to look at what is being done to reshape the officer structure of Britain’s navy.
Basic Structure
The core of the new officer structure is the General List of regular officers, the vast majority of whom enter the service as officer cadets intending to make it their career. The General List embraces the four main branches of the previous officer structure. Every officer in it is either a Seaman, Engineer, Supply and Secretariat, or an Electrical specialist.
Under the old structure, the general duties of the service were carried out, almost exclusively, by Executive Officers, the previous title of the new Seamen specialists. In the future these duties will be much more generally shared among all General List officers. All junior officers will stand bridge watches at sea. Senior officers of all four specializations will be appointed to high administrative posts hitherto reserved for executive officers.
Command of seagoing ships will remain the prerogative of seaman specialists, although it could, exceptionally, be entrusted to a specialist of a different type appointed “for Seaman Duties.” Officers of all four specializations will command shore establishments. Non-seaman General List officers may apply to subspecialize in aviation, but this, too, is “Seaman Duty,” and senior aviation appointments are confined to seaman specialists.
Apart from aviation, seaman specialists are essentially the users of the fighting and command equipment of ships. They provide the service with its experts on communications, gunnery, the conduct of mine, torpedo, and antisubmarine warfare, navigation, and the direction of aircraft. Engineers, in their specialist capacity, are responsible for all aspects of mechanical engineering. They maintain and operate the main machinery of ships and maintain, but do not employ operationally, armament, and aircraft machinery. Electrical specialists have similar responsibilities for electrical and electronic equipment.
Supply and Secretariat specialists have wide responsibilities for administration and logistics. They are responsible for the procurement and issue of stores in ships and shore establishments, a responsibility that embraces catering and the management of pay and cash accounts. They are not, however, responsible for the initial procurement of stores from industry. It is a peculiarity of the Royal Navy that this work, and the manning of depots and store ships, is in the hands of civil officers. The Secretarial responsibilities of these specialists include personal service to senior officers, as well as the managing of senior officers’ offices and legal duties.
These are the particular duties of the specialist branches, but it may be worth stressing again that one of the most important principles of the General List is that officers will have the chance to serve outside their own specialization. In the higher ranks where many appointments are administrative rather than specialist, this will enable the Royal Navy to make fuller use of the knowledge and experience of all its senior officers.
The central core of General List officers is supported by other officers with more restricted duties. They fall into various categories. One is made up of branches representing important civil professions, such as medicine and education. Within their own branches, medical and instructor officers can have a complete career structure, with the opportunity of rising to flag rank, but they are necessarily excluded from the wider prospects open to General List officers. Other officers have careers limited in respect to either duration of service or promotion prospects. Their conditions of service will be explained in more detail later in this article.
Entry and Training
In the days of sail, seamanship was an extremely difficult art which could be mastered only by long practical experience starting at an early age. To gain this experience potential naval officers went to sea in their early teens “to learn the ropes.” Several years of service had to be completed before they could qualify for commissioned rank. This system of training, by a practical apprenticeship, was started in the early days of the Royal Navy as an organized fighting service in the seventeenth century.
The Industrial Revolution led to a decline in the relative importance of pure seamanship compared with other professional subjects. The growing complexity of these other subjects made it necessary to introduce preliminary periods of shore training for officer cadets. The basic system of officer training remained, however, a very youthful entry followed by a practical apprenticeship in the fleet as a midshipman. This system had many advantages. Midshipmen went to sea young, holding a rank in which they could be allowed to learn by their own mistakes. There were, of course, balancing disadvantages. These grew gradually more serious and the traditional system was first modified and then abandoned.
Under the new system, which is still getting into its stride, entry as a cadet of the General List is open to young men between the ages of seventeen and two-thirds and nineteen. Cadets are selected by open, national examinations. There are no nominations. The examinations are in two parts: written papers to determine academic ability, followed by a selection board which uses the most modern methods of assessing character and general officer potential.
Successful candidates are entered as cadets for training at the Britannia Royal Naval College at Dartmouth. The Dartmouth course lasts just under two and a half years and is divided into three phases. It is a most important principle of Dartmouth training that officers of all specializations shall not only live and work together, but shall, to a great extent, receive the same instruction.
This aim of common training is most completely achieved during the first two phases. Indeed, until the end of Phase Two, most of the cadets do not know what their specialization will be. Only the Electrical Specialists, who have to have particular academic qualifications, are nominated for their specialization on entry.
Phase One consists of two terms1 of intensive indoctrination. There is little training in professional subjects; most of the lecture room work is academic, being designed to prepare the cadets for theoretical training in naval subjects later in the course.
Phase Two lasts only one term. It gives the cadets a practical introduction to ships and to naval aviation. They spend most of the term as working members of the ships’ companies of the destroyers and frigates of the Dartmouth Training Squadron. The remainder of the term is spent at a Naval Air Station.
At the end of Phase Two the cadets are promoted to the rank of midshipmen and are nominated for their specializations. The Electrical Specialists have, unfortunately perhaps, to leave Dartmouth at this point. They go to Cambridge University or a naval school to start their specialist training. The remainder of the midshipmen stay on at Dartmouth. Their higher rank is marked by superior accommodation and messing, and by increased privileges and responsibilities.
Phase Three lasts for four terms. It concentrates on training in specialist subjects. There is a different syllabus for each specialization. Much of the training is carried out in demonstration rooms, workshops, and laboratories; but regular periods are spent at sea in the Training Squadron to supplement theoretical instruction ashore by practical experience afloat. With these sea periods, in addition to Phase Two, most officers visit at least five European ports during their Dartmouth training.
The midshipmen who complete Phase Three successfully (and the failure rate is very small) are promoted to the rank of acting sublieutenant and go to sea in ships of the active fleet. Electrical Specialists, having a longer Phase Three, do not go to sea until later than other officers of their entry. On first going to sea, all four types of specialists are required to obtain certificates of competence to perform general duties aboard ship. When they have done this, the paths of the different specializations diverge.
The Seaman Specialists complete two commissions in seagoing ships, except for volunteers for aviation who start flight training as soon as they have qualified as officers of the watch at sea. Supply and Engineer Specialists spend only one commission in ships at this stage of their career, the latter half of it being spent on specialist duties. After this, Engineer Specialists go ashore for advanced specialist training.
During this time the acting sub-lieutenants have their rank confirmed. Subsequently they are promoted to lieutenant. The date of this promotion depends on the standards which they reached under training. A group which started training together as cadets will have a considerable range of seniorities as lieutenants and groups may overlap.
Finally, all General List lieutenants undergo a short general course at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich. This course is the conclusion and culmination of officers’ training after entry.
Promotion from lieutenant’s rank on the General List is automatic. After that, promotion is by selection. In the case of lieutenant commanders and commanders the selection is made from a zone of seniority. At present, the zone for seamen lieutenant commanders is from three to nine years in the rank. Any officer within these seniorities may be chosen, the selections being spread through the zone with the greatest density in the middle years. The promotions are announced half-yearly, making June 30 and December 31 anxious and important dates for British naval officers.
Officers who pass out of their zone without being promoted are described as “passed over,” a sad fate. They do not have to retire when this happens but may serve on in their rank, qualifying for an increasing pension, until they reach the compulsory age for retirement. This system of promotion is designed to ensure the swift advancement of outstanding officers.
Selection for promotion in the higher ranks is made from a much smaller zone at the top of the list. Captains reach the maximum seniority for their rank in half-yearly batches. When they do so, they are normally retired, unless selected for promotion to flag rank. Advancement through the flag list follows the same principle, although the ranks of flag officers are not rigidly linked to the posts they hold in the Royal Navy.
Sub-Specialization
The division of the General List into four specializations has been explained. These specializations are, themselves, sub-divided into various sub-specializations. This is a continuation of long-established practice.
The greatest degree of sub-specialization is found within the Seaman Specialization. Most navies have found it necessary to do this, to a limited degree at least, among such officers; to meet, for example, the needs of naval aviation and of the submarine service. In the Royal Navy, however, in addition to these two categories, Seaman Specialists can subspecialize in such subjects as communications, gunnery, navigation, and direction of aircraft and underwater warfare.
Officers can volunteer for the subject of their choice. If the required numbers of suitable candidates do not appear, other officers may be detailed for any sub-specialization, except that of pilot. At present not all seamen officers are required to sub-specialize and deliberately choose not to do so. They are known to the service as “Salt Horses.” Many of the executive officers of destroyers and commanding officers of smaller ships come from their ranks.
Sub-specialists qualify by taking “long courses” in the subjects of their choice. This is normally done by lieutenants of about two years seniority. After qualification nearly all a sub-specialist’s appointments as a lieutenant and as a lieutenant commander will have a sub-specialist flavor. A gunnery sub-specialist, for example, is likely to go to sea either as the gunnery officer of a small ship, or as second gunnery officer of a larger one, on completion of his qualifying long course. After that he can expect to alternate between ship or staff gunnery appointments at sea and service ashore in Gunnery Schools or Research Establishments.
In their sea appointments, sub-specialists carry out all the normal duties of seaman specialists in addition to their sub-specialist work. The direction officer of a cruiser, for example, might be her fo’c’s’le officer, with responsibility for anchor work and in charge of a division of seamen, or executive officer’s assistant or messdecks’ officer. The precise division of such duties between the senior seamen sub-specialists and Salt Horses would depend on their relative seniorities and upon the wishes of the captain and the executive officer.
Before World War II, there were relatively few sub-specialist appointments for officers above lieutenant commander rank. In those days most sub-specialists went back to full general duty on promotion to commander. Today the situation is very different. The postwar navy must provide experts to guide research and development projects; it has, in addition, large commitments for manning international staffs. These new circumstances have caused a considerable increase in the number of senior appointments requiring subspecialist knowledge and experience.
The reduced size of the fleet has made necessary another division within the Seaman Specialization, a division that applied only to commanders and more senior officers and which cuts right across the functional subspecialization of the junior grades. This is the division of senior Seaman Specialists into Post List and General List officers.
Officers are placed on one or other of these lists on promotion to commander. The distinction is that, normally, only Post List officers are appointed to the command of ships and to certain other seagoing appointments. General List officers may, and do, command shore establishments, but normally serve at sea only in staff appointments.
This scheme, which is called The Split List, was introduced in 1955. It was one consequence of the postwar reduction in the strength of the seagoing fleet. It was found that this fleet, under modern conditions, had fewer sea commands but still needed almost as many captains and commanders in shore appointments. As a result, the proportion of sea and shore billets for the senior grades of seamen specialists underwent a considerable change. Eventually a situation was reached in which the service would have suffered if the reduced number of sea billets had been shared equally among all seamen specialists, because no man’s share would have been large enough to have given him the sea experience required for a higher command. The Split List was introduced to remedy this situation.
Since 1955 a very determined effort has been made to reduce the number of shore appointments. It has not, however, been possible to change radically the balance between sea and shore appointments in the higher ranks, which seems to be an inevitable consequence of increasing technical complexity, combined with the acceptance of international staff responsibilities. The Split List, therefore, does seem to be here to stay.
Sub-specialization, so elaborately developed in the seaman specialization, is much less extensively practiced in the other three specializations of the General List. Where it occurs it is functional; there is plainly no requirement for a Post List. The most important examples of it are the Weapon and Air Machinery sub-specialists in the Engineering Specialization.
The Officers of the Supplementary and Special Duties Lists
Under the old officer structure the majority of officers in the navy in peacetime were entered as cadets on regular commissions. Since navies are a young man’s profession, this meant that there had to be very heavy wastage at the step from lieutenant commander to commander. It was exceptional for more than forty per cent of seamen lieutenant commanders to achieve this promotion in normal times.
So poor a career factor was tolerable in more spacious days, but it is quite unacceptable in the fiercely competitive modern world. All cadet entry officers are potential university honors graduates. The United Kingdom can no longer afford to waste such scarce human material in a career which ends abruptly with retirement at the age of forty- five. In addition this inflicts a hardship on many thoroughly capable officers, not quite outstanding enough to make the grade in the keen competition for the higher ranks.
The obvious solution was to reduce the proportion of General List officers, making up numbers with officers with lesser qualifications. This is now being done. The Supplementary and Special Duties Lists have been formed to provide the navy with officers with more limited prospects than the officers of the General List.
The Supplementary List consists of officers entered direct from civil life for a limited period, ten years being typical. They are given a shorter, more specialized training than General List officers. A proportion of those who do well will be able to transfer to a pensionable career; those who are really outstanding may transfer to General List. Promotion to the rank of lieutenant commander will be by selection; promotion to any higher rank will be possible, but only for the very few.
The principal purpose of the Supplementary List is to provide additional young officers for aircrew duties in the Fleet Air Arm. It replaces a short service scheme which has been used for this purpose in the past.
The List may, however, also be used to make good the reductions in the establishment of General List officers of the Seaman Specialization. It is hoped that comparatively few new officers will have to be drawn direct from civil life for this purpose. Apart from the special case of aircrew, the service hopes to obtain the additional officers it now needs from its own ranks by the promotion of ratings from the lower deck. Officers drawn from this source form the Special Duties List. The formation of this list was the latest of a succession of postwar measures to improve the standing and prospects of the men who used to be known as warrant officers.
There has always been a tendency for the Royal Navy’s warrant officers to have a higher status than equivalent ranks in other services. It is true that until some years after World War II they had their own messes in large ships and shore establishments, but their service afloat was not confined to the larger ships. They served, too, in small ships, where they lived in the wardroom and took a full share in mess life. Seamen warrant officers were usually assigned junior sub-specialist duties, but in small ships they performed all the general duties of officers, including watchkeeping at sea.
During the war, the small ship gunner or torpedo gunner was often the only regular officer apart from the commanding officer and perhaps the first lieutenant. Captains could relax when such men had a night watch. Under these circumstances it was anomalous and unfortunate that the most senior and experienced commissioned warrant officer ranked below any raw reserve sub-lieutenant.
This anomaly was corrected at the end of the war. The general status of warrant officers was improved at the same time. Their ranks were given new titles. They themselves were given commissions instead of warrants and became known collectively as Branch Officers. The special warrant officers’ messes were closed; all Branch Officers becoming, automatically, full members of wardroom messes, ashore and afloat.
The new officer structure brought the next major change, the transformation of the Branch List into the Special Duties List. Branch Officers held ranks with special titles, the junior grades wore the traditional thin stripe of the warrant officer. On the formation of the new list, the ranks of its officers were linked to those of the General List, the junior grade becoming sub-lieutenants with the normal insignia of that rank. There is now no outward distinction, except perhaps age, between General and Special Duties List officers.
Special Duties List officers will, in due course, have opportunity for promotion to commander rank. Promotion is by selection at every stage, the zone system being used. Under the old officer structure, an annual quota of Branch Officers were selected for transfer into the cadet entry stream of officers. This arrangement was discontinued when the Special Duties List was formed. Another scheme, under which young ratings can become General List officers direct, remains in effect.
The loss of the prospect of transfer to the General List for the few is compensated for by the much improved prospects and increased responsibilities of the Special Duties List as a whole under the new structure. There will be an expansion of the Special Duties List to compensate for the reduced number of General List officers. Warrant and Branch officers were, first and foremost, technical experts in some highly specialized naval subject. Today, new Special Duties officers undergo a broad course of qualifying training, in which the main emphasis is on the general tasks and qualities of officers, not the details of some sub-specialist subject. The aim is to produce officers initially, rather than technical experts. Advanced technical training follows in postgraduate courses, taken after the ex-ratings have gained some sea experience as officers.
This broadening of the training and of the outlook of Special Duties officers enables them to be given more interesting and more responsible duties than their predecessors. In the past, for example, the post of gunnery officer of a fleet destroyer would be filled by a junior General List lieutenant; today many of these officers have been replaced by experienced Special Duties lieutenants. The same process is going on all through the navy and the proportion of Special Duties officers is increasing in all wardrooms.
The Commonwealth Navies
The Royal Navy has fostered the growth of navies in the other nations of the British Commonwealth of Nations. Today these Commonwealth navies have reached widely different stages of development. Some are still in their infancy and rely on the Royal Navy for key personnel and the provision of a variety of facilities; others have grown to full maturity and become entirely self-contained and self-supporting. The Royal Australian Navy and the Royal Canadian Navy have built up their own proud traditions in two World Wars.
The general organization of the officer corps of most of the Commonwealth navies follows the broad principles of the Royal Navy’s organization. As experience is gained, however, these principles are adapted to suit special national conditions and at least one important navy has made a complete break away from them. The Royal Navy, in turn, draws on ideas first developed in other Commonwealth navies.
The ideals and spirit of the Commonwealth finds very real expression in the constant meetings and exchanges of appointments between the officers of the various navies. The officers of all the navies train together in a variety of courses. Later old friends meet and work together when ships of the various navies cruise and exercise in company.
1. The British academic year is divided into three terms.