THE ROYAL NAVY WARRANT OFFICER PART ONE

Notice the large gap between the admirals thick bottom stripe and the first of his ½" stripes. This accentuated the buttons to make them stand out, such are their importance.

This officer is Vice Admiral Sir William Hewitt in the 1880 period. Note the smaller gap between his bottom and first stripe when compared to the photograph to the left.

A variation on a theme. This captain is the commanding officer of an iron clad, sister ships to the well known HMS Warrior. Note his stripes and buttons, but note that they are not worn by his junior officers.

A picture of warrant officers. Of those seated 4 are executive warrant officers of 10 or more years seniority and 1 is an ordinary warrant officer. The officer standing to the right is a chief warrant officer or a commissioned warrant officer

A non executive officer from the mid Victorian period. This man is a Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve [RNVR] officer. Note that he has no curl on his stripes meaning that he belongs the civil branch of officers
With hair like that, who needs further curls anyway?

I have included this picture of a warrant officer to show you a close-up of his officers hat badge and cap, his officers multi-buttoned frock coat and the fancy work done on his cuffs. He wears just three buttons until he is either commissioned, in which case, he wear a single ½ stripe, or he has been a warrant officer for over 10 years, in which case he adds a ¼ inch stripe above his buttons.

In this picture a sub lieutenant gives an order to a warrant officer. Whilst they are shown in different dress and undress uniforms, the majority of their uniform articles were identical. Again, notice the three buttons on the cuffs of both men.

Midshipmen wore three buttons. They and cadets plus assistant clerks were considered to be subordinate officers and were therefore ranked below the basic warrant officer.

Then, just when three buttons worn horizontally were discarded, three button worn vertically were the fashion. Notice the odd way in which his medals are strung! The Victoria Cross should be the first medal [over the heart] with the remainder moving away towards the left shoulder.

The rate badge of the chief petty officer. This symbol is displayed on each cuff, which is plain and free from any stitching design.

The very first batch of post 1970 army style, naval warrant officers kept their chief petty officer buttons, and placed a royal coat of arms badge on the left sleeve only. Later on, the buttons were taken away leaving just the one coat of arms. A third attempt was made at getting it right, and a second coat of arms was added to the right cuff.

Here we see two warrant officers, one executive [with the curl] of over 10 years seniority, and one non exec or civil officer [the carpenter] also with 10 or more years seniority. The other men is a commissioned officer, and I would guess, almost certainly commissioned from a chief gunner or a chief boatswain. In the latter case, he simply drops the three buttons because he is already wearing a ½" stripe and becomes a sub lieutenant. The date was 1902.

FOR AN IN DEPTH LOOK AT THE HEALTH OF THE NAVY IN THE 1860's HAVE A LOOK HERE - IT IS FASCINATING!

{warrant officer today are a refined bunch of guys and gals but in 1790 they were a bad bunch - men only in those days of course]

!! NOTE - where you see this sign there is a 'snippet' of information to read.

Before I begin the story of the naval warrant officer, I want to spend a few minutes on one of the most ubiquitous symbols of the British naval uniform which has adorned the cuffs of jackets of naval men for nearly three hundred years irrespective of rank. Now, the symbol suggests lowly rank, but in the 19th century, it adorned the uniform of officers including the very highest naval officers. The symbol is 'three buttons'. The art work on the button changed with rank, but the presence of the symbol and its placement upon the cuff was the foundation of rank to which other adornments were added. If you have ever visited the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, East London, you will have seen the actual uniform worn by Lord Nelson at the time of his death. The blood stained coat has the bullet hole {the actual bullet is on display in Windsor Castle in the Royal Apartments] high on the left front shoulder and the blood stained stockings are shown, plus a ringlet of his hair and other pieces of his uniform. To stand there in front of this exhibit is a great privilege and one I never tire of. After Trafalgar his blood-stained uniform was given to Lady Hamilton as a keep-sake [but she received precious little else]: she died penniless in Paris in 1815 just as Napoleon's Empire was collapsing with his defeat at Waterloo. Then in 1845, some forty years after his death, Lord Nelson's uniform was purchased by HRH Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, and he donated it to the Nation for all posterity. That is why it is at Greenwich, a fully certified artefact. Lord Nelson's uniform has, on each cuff, two simple rings or stripes, similar to those worn by a lieutenant today but without the top loop. Sewn across the two rings are three buttons each carrying an ornate patternation. There is nothing more splendid than that on his cuffs/sleeves - just two rings and three buttons. October 1918 saw a major change in the way the symbol was used, and from that year onwards, it has had only two uses. The first was that it was the rate badge for all chief petty officers, which has continued through to this day. Then, for a short time only, a farce occurred at the introduction of the army-type, naval warrant officer in 1970 when the new warrant officer, known as a Fleet Chief Petty Officer [FCPO] had to continue wearing three buttons on both cuffs with a warrant officers badge placed on the left cuff above the buttons. That episode is mentioned within. Here are a few pictures showing the use of three buttons on the cuff: [Note: in certain circumstances, when you have opened a thumbnail, you may have to 'maximise' the picture, but this will be rare , if at all]

NOW I want you to look at the following picture, which, like reading a preface or an introduction to a book, will give you a good idea of what all this effort is about - look here to begin and use your horizontal and vertical scroll bars to see the full picture.. The word 'RANKER' is used at some point in every publication of the Warrant Officers Journal even when posting an obituary

. Its meaning is simply ANYBODY who became a wardroom officer from the lower deck, NOT just from the warrant officers mess.

Many of you reading this page will be au fait with the Form CW 1A, but are you aware that the form is called a CW because it recommends and thereafter follows the procedure of recommending a person from the lower deck to either Commissioned or Warrant Rank. Whilst it's name has continued, the 'W' part ceased shortly after the second world war. At the introduction of the Fleet Chief Petty Officer in 1970, at that time in all but name a warrant officer, the Form S264C was used for reporting on Chief Petty Officer candidates.

Hello, and a warm welcome to a bit of naval social history, rarely told, and certainly not well understood. The documentation supporting this rank is a pot-mess, with condescending piecemeal snippets added to the many research books I studied in my leisure periods at the Norriss Library in Portsmouth, as well as those I spent at the Public Records Office Kew in West London. The Norriss library has an excellent naval reference section, a treasure chest for the serious naval researcher. I am not that, although I could so easily become one were my wife to agree to becoming a research-widow, such is the 'pulling-power' within those many walls of books.

The subject is to say the least, vast, not necessarily the subject of the warrant officer per se, but because the warrant officer, just like any other officer, is inseparable from the evolving story of the Navy, taken from the days of Admiral Vernon and followed right up to 1949 when their Lordships terminated all warrants. Moreover, from the beginning, I knew that only the basic facts could be written into a web page, so, much of what I did learn, might be used for a small book or booklet in the future: who knows? Above all else, remember that this whole web site is a hobby of mine, which is one of several, so please do not think of me as an 'anorak'. Whilst I am keen to get things right, I am not trying to earn money [like an author or an historian might] from it. My ulterior motive is to share knowledge and to get people interested in web sites, particularly naval web sites.

Overall, there is no set time period, although there is more detail relating to a period post 1860 than there is before this date. I have chosen this year and the period in which it sits for three basic reasons. The first is that it is well documented in naval archives and public records, so data is freely available from the public domain. Secondly, because it was roughly half way through Queen Victoria's reign [1837-1901] and there was social change in Britain although at a snails-pace in the navy, and thirdly, because it was more or less half way between the end of the Crimean War and the beginning of the 1st World War, a period in which the navy's modus operandi was to change at a quicker pace. The following plates will give you a feeling for the rules and regulations in force at, or about, that time. After you have read and understood a little bit more about each of our warrant officers and their grades, you may like to return here to reassess the relevancy of these figures and data.

My story is about the ROYAL NAVAL WARRANT OFFICER [I was one from September 1975 until July 1983 although a rating, not a rank] but it touches upon other naval matters and subjects too.

To start with there are few if any, comparisons between the warrant officer from the mid Victorian period to 1949 and those of today's navy, and from the beginning, it should be understood that warrant officers of long ago were [or could be] commissioned and all were listed in the Navy List, whereas today, warrant officers are promoted above chief petty officers, but remain fully tethered to the lower deck with no opportunity [because of age] of ever getting into the wardroom. Having missed their chance of being commissioned, for whatever reason, promotion to warrant officer today is a 'second bite of the cherry.' One of an almost continuous string of complaints by the warrant officers of those days [which believe it or not lasted until after the second world war] was that they were often confused with the army's system of warrants, and some, for their own ends, milked the confusion which existed, making the 'admin function of bi-service [and later tri-service] co-operation difficult. You may recall from my picture gallery above, that the navy had three types of warrant officer by uniform styles, but in reality two only by rank. The first type, the warrant office, was split by a ten-year rule whereby on being promoted one wore three buttons on the cuff, and then after ten years of being a warrant officer, the 'reward' of a ¼" stripe was added: pay increased but status didn't, whereas respect might have. The second type was a chief or a commissioned warrant officer - CWO - [title depended upon branch], wearing three buttons and a ½" stripe. The army had two warrant officers, 1st and 2nd class, and neither were commissioned. Every year without fail, in Queens Regulations and Admiralty Instructions [QRAI], in the Navy List and in the Seamanship Manual, an equivalent ranks list was issued. These written and graphics plates come from 1922. . On the first plate, line 12 and 13 concern warrant officers, 12 being CWO and 13 being WO. The CWO is the equivalent of a 2nd lieutenant and the WO to a small list of army WO1's, but, note the caveat at the end of the army list....."but senior to the above ranks." The second plate confirms this graphically. There is no naval equivalent to the army WO 2nd class. Clearly then, at all times the navy WO outranked all army WO's notwithstanding. The last plate shows the warrant officer as the equivalent to a Pilot Officer in the RAF. By the 1930's, relative rank of officers looked like this

x 4 {Note the AIR ranks which filtered through to the RFC and then the RAF. Note too that the fleet air arm had a WO1 and a WO2 the only branch of the Service ever to have a WO2} {Note right hand column last dagger} {Note PN and PN Dagger abbreviations} {Note the definition of the [KM], the GM CLICK GOLD MEDALS , and that the Albert Medal became the GC {George Cross} CLICK

The new army style warrant officers of 1970, or the Master Rate as the MOD styled it, brought the navy into line with all other 1st class warrant officers in the British army, marines and air force, but not into line with other NATO forces with whom we regularly worked and occasionally socialised. I well remember an embarrassing affair which involved me personally. It was 1977 whilst appointed to FOF2, a seagoing-admiral's staff job. A group of staff officers plus myself as a staff warrant officer had flown to Norfolk Virginia USA., to join a USN planning team, preparing for a major Atlantic exercise which was to see FOF2 [Rear Admiral Martin La Touche Wemyss] embarked in the guided missile destroyer HMS London [Captain D.N. O'Sullivan RN] for passage back to the UK. On arrival, we were met by USN personnel who took us by bus to the navy base, and during that short journey I enquired as to where my mess was and would this bus take me there? "What's your name sir?" He checked his list, asked me to confirm that I was a warrant officer, and told me that we were all going to the same place. The bus stopped at the wardroom, a large building divorced from other buildings. Quite obviously there was a misunderstanding, and I didn't need the telling facial signs of the staff officers to make me aware of that. In the USN, {look at this page [which you will see later on in the story] and look at the RED cell in TABLE 3 - Click here} a warrant officer is a wardroom rank, and I should have been listed as an enlisted man, namely as a fleet chief petty officer. As it happened, subsequent discussion revealed that I was the equivalent to an E9, a Master Chief in the USN [which of course I knew before I asked the bus driver my question], and for that reason [and being a foreigner] I was given the red-carpet treatment by the Mess President himself, and I later learned that my overall accommodation package was better than the staff officers had received from the base wardroom.

Staying with words/titles and the way they can lead your mind down blind alleys, let's briefly look at the word 'master' as used in the royal navy and always referring to the warrant rank. For the time being, I will ignore 'master' when talking about the master [as in Master and Commander - the recent 2003 Hollywood epic] of a ship, although he of course was a warrant officer. Master, like many English words has more than one meaning, but essentially, there are two meanings which everybody would recognise. The first is master when applied to an old boy just before he is old enough to be considered a Mr, which differentiates him from a small and young boy. The second however, always means the boss man; a person in charge, the top of his grade, promoted by adding such words as 'head', 'senior', 'grand', 'great', 'old' etc. From the previous paragraph, a Master Chief is a boss man [at his level] but he can also be 'senior' or even [yes!] a 'fleet' although the USN tend to use the word at the back of the title, making it 'Master Chief of the Fleet' - a very influential position. Thus a Senior Master........presupposes something grand; the boss of bosses. The R.N., rank of "Senior Master Commissioned Warrant Officer" therefore took my fancy and intrigued me. I had been searching through files on war time losses ostensibly looking for data relating to warrant officers, and this rather long and grand title came up every now and again, and always associated with big ship losses. It was some time before it dawned on me why there were so few of them: after all, there were many scores of commissioned warrant officers, and warrant officers were counted in the hundreds. The title referred to a teacher, a school master, where a school master [in full name] was a warrant officer, and a senior school master [abbreviated to master] was a commissioned warrant officer - a commissioned wardroom teacher was an Instructor Officer viz....Instructor Commander........So, masters and masters intra-RN; warrant officers and warrant officers inter-services and pan-international armed forces, can be confusing and need to be explained and qualified. Incidentally whilst on the subject, few officers listed as dead or missing in the second world war had university degrees, and I was rather surprised to see the number of "warrant officer school masters" who did have them.

The concept and idea of the post 1970 naval warrant officer is new and sets a precedent. If the concept has any parallels in the military sense, they are to found in the history of the army warrant officers and not in the history of the pre 1950 naval warrant officer. All naval warrant officers were officers first and foremost, wore officers uniforms, carried swords, were saluted and lived separately from the ships company, defined by QRAI, as petty officers {3 grades} and seamen. Today's SD officer is a direct descendant of the pre 1950 warrant rank, which as you will see, went from warrant to branch and then to SD.

First a song sheet [the tune is British Grenadiers] followed by a sound file * speakers required * [click here = lord nelson song.wav]

At the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815, WO’s were established in two very obvious ways. Firstly, they were the acknowledged but socially unacceptable experts in any ship, and got to their positions by sheer hard graft and hands-on experience [often referred to as empiric knowledge], unlike the majority of the lieutenants who usually got their lieutenancies by ‘interest’, rife among young gentlemen and their patrons of the day, when being a gentleman mattered more than being able. Secondly, that unlike virtually all others in the navy including lieutenants, warrant officers were entitled to pensions.

WO's fell into two categories, those with wardroom rank and those without, although the reader should understand that all warrant officers notwithstanding whether they were or were not of wardroom rank, were officers and not ratings. Confusing? Yes, by our understanding of the upper and lower deck of today, but all will be revealed soon! {Just one of scores of pages}

Wardroom ranked WO's lived aft with lieutenants, and were the master, the surgeon, the purser and the chaplain. As a group they were of differing social acceptances to the lieutenants who shared the same living space, and within the group of WO's, the master ‘ruled the roost,’ which in effect split the wardroom into three groups, with the master, despite his lowly social position as a WO, the most important man after the senior lieutenant. Naval historians have said that he, the master, belonged to a group having the senior lieutenant [the first lieutenant] the commander and the captain as its other members, but neither the first lieutenant, commander or the captain would dare to challenge or over-rule the commands given by the master when it came to ship handling, the amount of sail-set aloft, the conning of the ship or ships safety. The captain knew that should a ship be put in harms way, a board of inquiry would always hear the masters story first. Thus the master was a powerful WO rank. The original masters were literally just that, masters of ships which in times of peace went about their business on merchant matters, but in times of war when the ships were requisitioned for naval service, the master stayed in sea-command, and the captain and first lieutenant/commander boarded for military-command. The masters at the time of Nelson were from that school and they were expert seamen [salt-horses] but because they had been at sea since they were 8 years old as cabin boys, they had no formal education nor social graces, hence their appointment by warrant and not by commission. Every ship had this group of three/four men in charge and all three/four were respected, sometimes feared, and sailors put their trust in them. It is clear that the master would have been privy to all orders and the rules of engagement and he would have enjoyed being in the confidence of the captain when other commissioned officers were not. The navy recognised his position vis-à-vis all other wardroom officers and a masters pay was roughly double that of a lieutenants. Warrant officers of wardroom rank wore special emblems on their collars and buttons as follows.


The Masters emblem, also worn by a Master-of-the-Fleet	The Surgeon emblem. Also worn by the Physician.	The emblem of the Purser. Notice the convoluted rope work.	The emblem of a Secretary, a late joiner to the ranks of WO's

It is of interest to note that in 1984, HM The Queen presented the following flag to the RN Stores and Transport Department, which flies outside naval stores depots ...seen it before? Additionally, this is the the flag of the Admiralty Board - can you see any comparison with those above?

Today, we all understand that merchant ships have masters in command whereas in the royal navy we always call the commanding officer the captain whether he be a captain proper or a lieutenant. In Nelsons time the ship had both master and captain [commander], and the latter became known as the ‘owner’ – today, we might call him ‘father.’ Both the master and the captain belonged to the executive branch.

In 1787 WO's had been issued with a blue uniformed coat comparable with that worn by the gentlemen lieutenants . These plates are equally 'romantic' but nevertheless shown articles of clothing. The first shows the hats of non-wardroom WO/CWO [gunner, boatswain and carpenter] at a time when the other warrant officer, master, surgeon, purser and chaplain worn the cocked hat like this officer . This series of plates is factual and shows the detail of the warrant officers uniform.

The other three wardroom WO's - known as civil branch rather than executive branch, were not borne as combatants and were not trained in the art of fighting including close quarter combat. They were in a support role only and their pay reflected this. By and large, these three wardroom ranked WO's [purser, surgeon and chaplain] were academically better qualified than the master and often more socially accepted by the lieutenants.

Surgeon WO's were the first to wear a uniform which had distinctive gilt buttons and these were worn at the time of Trafalgar. Other WO's quickly followed. Surgeons WO's and purser WO's were appointed to every sea-going ship, but WO chaplains were only found in large ships and then if there were enough to go around, for this breed of man and his calling didn’t take kindly to the ways of the sea and to the navy.

The social line of division was from the start, between commissioned and WO's – note, not commissioned and non commissioned as we would say today: then, there was no equivalent to non commissioned officers, the divide being officers [which included all WO's] and ships company to which petty officers belonged, and petty officers came in three grades chief, first and second class – but collectively, just petty officers. During the early part of the 19^th century and after Trafalgar, all wardroom WO's [4 of them] were reappointed full wardroom commissioned officers to be integrated with and socially accepted by the wardroom lieutenants. The masters, now commissioned, continued in their duties until well after 1850 when the word was dropped as a rank, and they became executive lieutenants, which, in 1877, was split into the under or over eight year rule [under, two stripes; over two and half stripes, but a lieutenant in both cases, and not until 1914, a lieutenant commander]. Of the three other wardroom WO's now newly commissioned, the purser started the Paymaster Branch which became the Supply and Secretarial Branch; the surgeon the Medical Branch and the chaplain, the Chaplains Branch.

These two plates show the uniform dress code for warrant officer in 1862 - the second plate is the more interesting of the two Thus, by the early 19^th century, when all officers living in the wardroom were commissioned, just three warrant officer were left in each ship which from the beginning had always been called non-wardroom officers. Their title was collectively ‘standing officers’ which meant that they were always employable and were warranted for many years continuous service culminating with a service pension, whereas all others could be, and were, regularly laid off onto half-pay with no pension to look forward to. This group of warrant officers were the gunner, the boatswain and the carpenter and their ranks were to remain in the navy right up until the middle of the 20^th century [1949] a span of hundreds of years going back to the 16^th century to the time of the Spanish Armada, and probably before. The change of status from warrant to commission for the former wardroom WO's affected the standing officers little, if at all. After the master, the first lieutenant and the captain, this group of officers were treated with respect as their expertise in their respective skills were second only to the first group mentioned and they held great sway over the ships routine at all times. They were permanent residents, hence 'standing officers' and when the ship paid-off they remained onboard and moved their wife and children in with them.

The standing officers lived on the orlop deck deep in the bowels of the ship, in cabins next to their part-of-ship stores. They had their own cooks and servants and they were well looked after. When necessary they assembled with the wardroom officers on deck, that group being joined occasionally by the gun room officers made up of midshipmen, cadets and assistance clerks. On a few rare occasions, standing officers would be invited to the gun room [a mess for subordinate officer junior to themselves] for a meal and a drink, but in the main, they were social lepers. WO's were allowed their rum ration but not officers rations of liquor [whisky, brandy etc] so they would exchange bottles of rum for 'decent' stuff with the midshipmen who were allowed officers liquor. It would have been unheard of for the gunner, boatswain and carpenter to visit the wardroom. As emphatic, without these three men, the wardroom officers were rudderless, akin to headless chickens. The following plates come from the actual records of HMS Victory at the time of Trafalgar which are archived at the PRO Kew. The boy first class is of special interest. The difference between 3rd class and 2nd class was age. The boy 2nd class would go on to be a fully fledged seaman. The boy 1st class was being trained to become a officer as an upper yards man. [SEE ALSO BOYS TRAINING IN THE LAST HALF OF THE 19TH CENTURY AND BOYS TRAINING IN 1903]

There is a charming story about Trafalgar of a father and son relationship. The son, a midshipman had had his leg amputated by the surgeon. The father, a boatswain, took his son from the surgeon's area to his cabin [both on the orlop deck] where he nursed him back to full health. Quite often after surgery, men died through lack of post operative care.

Late in the 17^th century, captains had introduced men into their ships to teach midshipmen and seamen. The captain paid his wages and the students [midshipmen gentlemen] contributed. He was classed as a petty officer but later on was raised to the rank of midshipman a rank he maintained without further progress until the early 19th century. In 1812, the Admiralty put the school teaching business onto a formal footing and introduced a fourth civil branch to add to surgeon, purser and chaplain. This new man was either the midshipman above, or a special petty officer paid extra pay for tuition services, or a down-on-his-luck academic recruited for teaching duties and they, with the chaplain took it in turns to teach. The midshipman schoolmaster was not a wardroom officer and lived and messed in the gunroom. A quarter of a century later in 1836, the schoolie midshipman was promoted to a WO, given wardroom status and the title Naval Instructor and School Master. In 1842 he became established on a proper pay scale and renamed a Naval Instructor. A further quarter of a century past and in 1877 he was given commissioned status. "A picture says a thousand words" so this next picture summarises the main points already mentioned. Click on this link and then use your horizontal and vertical scroll bars to navigate the picture.

Trafalgar was to be the last great battle for the royal navy for over 110 years, but her ships and men fought a few other battles and skirmishes after Nelson's death, which included the war with America in 1812 and the Crimean War which had just finished when steam entered the navy, and heralded the start of much change. Within these changes came changes to uniform, to regulations covering all manner of naval subjects, and to rank structure bringing with it many new faces into the ranks of warrant officers. The monopoly held by the three standing-officers was about to be broken. Sadly, in a way, the changes brought to an end the triumvirate of gunner, boatswain and carpenter when the carpenter was relegated from being an executive warrant officer to a new life being a civil or non-executive warrant officer. After that, the gunner and the boatswain shared the power as the only two executive warrant officers, a state which lasted long after the advent of steam. In the picture to the left, which shows the gunner, the boatswain and the carpenter, all with their smoking pipes, I need to explain that the officer on the right is a commissioned gunner, an executive officer - sub lieutenant - from the warrant rank [an ex WO or CWO] who lives in the wardroom. The officer in the centre is a WO with over 10 years seniority as a WO, and, although it is difficult to see, he too has a curl in his stripe, denoting his status as a boatswain. However, I am confused about the jacket of the carpenter, the man on the left. He should be wearing three buttons on his sleeve at the very least and a ¼" stripe [like the boatswain] above his buttons if he had been a carpenter for 10 years or more, or a ½" stripe if he was a commissioned or chief carpenter, the difference being that since his relegation from executive to civil branch his stripe would not have a curl in it. I have no answer for you. This next plate is the text associated with the picture but as I have explained it is wrong and misleading. Very occasionally, when a gunner or a chief [CWO] gunner - ALL WARRANT RANKS - was promoted to be a sub lieutenant or a lieutenant he stayed on in the ship for the rest of that commission until paying-off, still doing the duties as 'gunner' as well as his newly inherited wardroom duties known as 'quarterdeck' duties. This could be the case here!

Their Lordships spent much of their time on officers matters, including their uniforms, but virtually little or no time on the ships company uniforms. See THE NAVAL UNIFORM. As the first of the iron-clads were being launched, officers uniforms and their swords looked like these in the table below.

The navy list and the Queens Regulations [Queen Victoria of course] and Admiralty Instructions [QRAI] went 'overboard' to get the message across that since there were no wars to fight and these damn engine room people and their baggage [coal] were spoiling the bright-work and scrubbed-white upper decks, better we executives occupy our minds with appearances. Here are just a few of the regulations which flooded the fleet.


Annual pay in 1860. The Gunner, Boatswain and Carpenter were the three[ 'standing officers'] warrant officers who did not have wardroom status. The 1st class refers to a Chief warrant officer etc; the 2nd class to a Warrant officer with over 10 years seniority and the 3rd class to a Warrant officer with less than 10 years seniority.	In 1880 there were only 12 Chief Gunners in the navy. Note the dates of their seniority as warrant officers dating back to 1851. By the time this was published Timothy Donohue would have been a warrant officers for 30 years.	1876 pay scales. The years one had to serve in various appointments is quite staggering by our standards today.	1880's pay scales. Note that the wardroom servant is paid the same as the warrant officers servant £19.15.5d p.a., = £19.77 which in lots of cases today is an hourly rate. Note also that both cooks are paid the same.	From the monthly published Naval Memoranda. Year 1885. Good news for seamen CPO's with an extra 48 warrants issued. These were fully pensionable positions, and at that time many officers were laid off on half pay.

From the Naval Gazettes of June 1885. Note the warrant officer promoted for gallantry in Egypt. Although just a one rank higher promotion, his uniform could have changed from either just three cuff buttons meaning a warrant officer under 10 years seniority or from three cuff buttons over which was a quarter inch stripe with a curl for executive meaning a warrant officer with over 10 years seniority, to the uniform of a Chief Boatswain which was three cuff buttons over which was a half inch stripe with a curl.	1885 Admiralty appointments for the week commencing the 24th June.	This list compliments the plate to the left on appointments. It is a good presentation of the officers of the Royal Navy as it was in 1899.	From the Navy Gazettes in 1885. Text self evident. All warrant officers of whatever branch or seniority were listed.	1893 and a reward to some of the retired Chief Gunners, Boatswains and Carpenters.

	Headgear worn in 1900	Other parts of uniform worn in 1900	The well dressed Chaplain of 1900

	Look to the left for an explanation			Look to the left for an explanation
						Ignoring the obvious differences of sleeve stripes, scrambled-egg on cap, and aiguillette worn by the flag lieutenant, this uniform is the same as that worn by all warrant officer