Since the Great French Wars the British Navy has altered out of all recognition in its materiel; but changes in the personnel are often considerably less than appears on the surface.

To take matters in the same order as they are taken in Chapter VIII, Vol. I., uniform has, of course, long established itself. It has done so with a formality which, in the view of many, has “established the régime of the tailor rather than the sailor.” Within the last few years a slight change for the better has occurred; but of the greater part of the period so far as concerns purposes for which uniform was first introduced—the sailor and tailor exchanged places. Much has been written about admirals and captains whose ideas of naval efficiency were limited by “spit and polish,”43 but “spit and polish” at its worst was never so bad as that tailoring idea which was the ultimate result of George II admiring the costume of the Duchess of Bedford.44

The mischief is popularly supposed to lie with naval officers. Actually its roots lie with officials, who have piled regulation upon regulation, and the Vanity of Vanities is to be found so far back as the days of the great St. Vincent and his recorded orders about officers shoe-laces. Lesser lights than he, being in authority, blindly imitated. And so the uniform fetish grew and prospered.

This is not to be taken wholly as a condemnation—for all that a system which made one of the most important duties of a lieutenant to be the carrying round of a tape measure with a view to ascertaining whether every man was “uniform” within a fraction of an inch may seem more suggestive of comic opera than of naval efficiency. Within reasonable limits, conformity has many virtues; and a man slovenly in observing uniform regulations is likely enough to be slovenly in things of greater moment. Like most bad things in the Navy, the principle was ideal: only the carrying of it too far was at fault. There is not the remotest reason to believe that a Navy not in uniform would be as efficient as one in uniform—all the probabilities are that it would be less so. The man who invented the saying that “a pigmy in uniform is more impressive than a giant in plain clothes” was making no idle statement, but stating a general verity. The trouble is solely in the difficulty that has ever been experienced in striking a common-sense mean—a difficulty created by the first mediocrity who tried to stand in St. Vincent’s shoes, and who lacked the brains to realise that what St. Vincent had started with a definite Service object in view, he—the unknown mediocrity—had merely lost in the means. An example once created had to be followed. The hardships of conformity—of which overmuch is heard nowadays—are actually trivial, on account of the custom. The mischief lies not in the conforming, but in the waste of time of those who are made responsible for that conformity.

In essence, modern uniform is simple enough: that the various ranks should be noted by special insignia is obviously desirable. For combatant officers, the distinguishing sleeve-marks are:—

Engineer officers wear the same insignia with purple between the stripes. Non-combatant officers are without the curl to the stripes, and wear colours to distinguish them as follows:—Doctors, red; Paymasters, white; Naval Instructors, blue.

The system for the supply of the personnel is to-day altogether different from what it was a hundred years ago. Till comparatively recently future deck officers were taken very young, passed into the Service as Naval Cadets, and thence promoted up to Midshipmen, etc., while Engineers and officers of the other civilian branches joined later in life.

More or less contemporaneously with the Dreadnought era this was altered by the “New Scheme of Entry,” also known as the “Selbourne Scheme,” after the then first Lord of the Admiralty, but really the creation of Admiral Fisher, the Sea Lord who was the moving spirit at the Admiralty at that time.

Few schemes have been more virulently criticised—few, in some cases, more unfairly. Like nearly all Admiral Fisher’s innovations, the scheme was better on paper than in fact. Like all his other schemes it was carried through at far too great a pace for the ultra-conservative moods of the British Navy, which has ever resented anything but the most gradual of changes. On the other hand, it is too often forgotten by critics that a great agitation on the part of naval engineer officers, backed by very considerable shore-influences, was then in existence. Something had to be done, and done quickly. Of Admiral Fisher it may ever be said that he acted where others merely argued.

Under the New Scheme, the deck-officer, the engineer, and the marine-officer were all to enter as cadets at a very tender age, undergo a common training, and be specialised for any Branch at option or at Admiralty discretion later on.

Whatever may be said against the New Scheme, it was magnificent on paper. Engineer officers had first come into the Navy as mechanics to work an auxiliary motive-power in which no “seamen” had much faith. From that humble beginning the status of their Branch grew and grew, till both motive-power and the existence of nearly everything on ship-board depended on the engineers. At the same time the official status of the Branch remained practically in the same stage as it did when the first few “greasers” were entered. The deck-officer was (nominally, at any rate) drawn from the aristocracy; the engineer officer from the democracy in a great measure. In so far as this obtained, “social war” was added to the real issue. It was obvious that this state of affairs was detrimental to naval efficiency. Something had to be done.

Admiral Fisher cut the Gordian knot in his own fashion. In substance his Scheme provided that future engineer officers were to be drawn from the same class as deck-officers—to gild the pill, marine officers were flung into the same melting pot. He might have done better: but far more conceivably harm might have been perpetrated.

As an argument behind him, he had Drake and Elizabethan conditions, the history of the days when every man was made to “sail his ship and fight it too.” The U.S. Navy had already plunged on a somewhat similar experiment. When the Russo-Japanese War came, the Japanese, in the middle of a life-and-death fight, suddenly granted executive rank to their engineer officers—i.e., that right to control and punish their own men which British marine officers have always had.

The Scheme met its first rock in the Marines. For three hundred years or thereabouts the “Sea Regiment” has been afloat as a thing apart. The “leather-necks”—as the sailors call them—have built up their own traditions. They have ever remained a force apart from both Army and Navy, belonging to both and yet to neither. The record of the Marines is such that when, recently, it was proposed that they should have a regimental colour with their battles emblazoned on it, the idea had to be abandoned because there was not room on the flag for their services!

Any attempt to interfere with the continuity of such a corps was fore-doomed to failure from the first. The Marines resisted being turned into sailors just as they would have resisted being turned into soldiers. They stood out uncompromisingly for being “the Sea Regiment.” The expected happened. By 1911 this part of the New Scheme was practically shelved, and the most unique body of men in the world was left to carry out its own traditions.

In the matter of future engineers, snags were struck likewise, but here a more or less unreasoning conservatism on the part of parents played its full part. The average parent objected to his son becoming an engineer specialist over old-time reasons. A further and weightier objection was, and continues to be, raised by engineering experts, who argue that engineering is a life profession, not to be picked up efficiently by casual specialization.

The matter is still under discussion, and its verification or otherwise rests with the future. As to the first point, a serious effort to overcome it was made early in 1912 by the promulgation of an order that New Scheme officers, specialised for engineering, would be eligible for the command of submarines equally with deck-officers.

The importance of this particular point is great; for by the end of 1911 it was generally believed that the motor warship would at some more or less early date in the future replace the steam-driven one; and so the “sail-his-ship-and-fight-it-too” theory found a new interpretation.

As regards the rank and file of the Navy, the difference of a hundred years has been so great and so commented on that to-day we perhaps tend to make it, seem far greater than it really is. It is to be doubted whether the “prime seaman” has altered to anything like the extent imagined. We are all too prone to forget that in the days of the Great French Wars all the crews were not jail-birds, pressed-men, and riff-raff. The leaven of the mass were the “prime seamen,” who, in their own way, were as well trained for the naval service as are the bluejackets of to-day.

Since then the “prime seamen” have had many vicissitudes. So long ago as the time of the Crimean War men of ten years’ continuous service were in existence, but whatever the “paper” value of this force may have been, the extracts given in Chapter VIII, Vol. I, make it abundantly clear that the “prime seaman” was in practice very scarce. It is long since then that the long service system was built up.

Under this every bluejacket was a “prime seaman” either in posse or in esse. He was entered for a period of ten years, with option to re-engage for a further ten years at slightly increased pay and a pension on retirement. At a later and comparatively recent stage this total of twenty years got increased to twenty-two years. The prospects were improved to the extent that the best men of the Lower Deck upon reaching Warrant Rank were able, towards the close of their careers, to reach the rank of lieutenant on the Active List. In a word, the idea of a Navy consisting entirely of “prime seamen” was more or less actually reached.

This system had, however, one drawback. It was, relatively speaking, very expensive. When the Fisher revolution took place Economy was very much the motto of the day. It was pointed out that outside the Royal Naval Reserve, consisting of merchant seamen, no effective reserve existed. It was further pointed out that on board a modern battleship there were many duties which could just as well be performed by partially trained or even untrained men as by skilled men.

Out of these two points (according to some critics), by using the first as a cloak for the economy of the second, a certain retrograde movement was established in the institution of the Short Service System. Under this the old time “landsman” was revived under another name. Under the Short Service System a man could enter the Navy for five years, receiving ordinary pay for ordinary duties, but without prospects of promotion or pension, except in so far as he might afterwards be utilised for reserve purposes.

How far this scheme made for efficiency is a moot point, but it certainly led to economy. As certainly it was bitterly resented by the men of the Navy. The views of the officers on the subject of “ticklers”—as Short Service men were termed afloat—were less decided. Some considered the scheme an abomination; others thought it very satisfactory.

With so conservative an institution as the British Navy, it is yet too early to give a definite decision one way or the other on the subject. But it is worth noting that no one seems to have remarked on the fact that it was a tentative return, under modern and peace conditions, to what obtained in the days of the Great French Wars, and then at least satisfactorily answered requirements.

No one really knew, and no one could do more than surmise, what would be required for manning the Fleet in the next great war in which the British Navy was engaged. It was generally assumed that in the present century the re-institution of the press-gang would be quite impossible owing to public opinion.

Public opinion, however, is a variable quantity, and with a Navy in desperate plight for men there is no saying definitely what might or might not happen, either publicly or sub rosa. It was generally agreed on all hands that, large as the trained personnel of the British Navy is, it might prove totally inadequate in a big naval war. In such case extra men would have to be found—sentiment or no sentiment. The Short Service System, despite all its drawbacks, has so far proved a loophole to avoid the horrors of the press-gang of the old days; and much which on the face of it was at the time obviously unsatisfactory may in the future prove to have been foresight of an unexpectedly high order.

It only remains to add that nothing of this sort has ever been advanced in extenuation by advocates of Short Service, who have confined themselves entirely to the obvious point of economy and the more or less debatable point of an efficient reserve.

To-day, of course, the crews do not find their ships a prison; but it is a moot question whether they are relatively much better off than in Nelson’s day. A great deal of leaven is given—far more, indeed, than is represented by philanthropic agitators—but it is mainly of the nature of “short leave.” This—in these days of travel—means very little relatively, since it rarely allows of a trip home. For good or ill, the bluejacket of to-day is a “home-bird”; consequently, what a hundred years ago would have represented “ample liberty,” to-day appears much on all fours with the old time confinement to the ship. Modern facilities for travel have swallowed up most of the difference! This is among the matters not understood by the Powers That Be. The perspective has changed; and Service Conditions have not yet been fully accommodated to the alteration.

Food remains a source of naval grievance to-day almost as much as in the days of the Great Mutiny. That it does so is mostly an inherited tradition of the past; for both quality and quantity are now excellent. An impression prevails, however, that were messing provided by the Admiralty on non-profit lines instead of by contract, “extras” would either be cheaper, or that what are now “canteen profits” on them would be more available than they are at present. There is little reason to believe that this is so. Like the purser of a hundred years ago, the modern contractor probably does not make a tenth of the profit that he is legendarily supposed to make, nor is there any clear proof that things could be materially bettered, except in details which have little or nothing to do with the main point.

When all is said and done, the bluejacket of the Twentieth Century has always been fed as well or better than his brother in civilian life, and his growls upon the subject of messing do not demand any very serious attention. Just as the Great Mutiny of 1797 brought about an attention to details of uniform, regulations and things of that sort which have ever since endured, so it perpetuated a corresponding impression that an official eye must ever be directed to keeping messing more or less up to the mark. And that eye has never slumbered.

In Chapter VIII, Vol. I, a page is devoted to surgery in the Great War Era. Here, as in some other matters, progress may be more real than imaginary. Now, as then, the Navy offers little in the way of lucrative inducements to a good surgeon. In one sense it offers less than it did; for, though exceptions can be found, the general naval conception of the doctor is still the old-fashioned notion of someone to cure the sick man rather than the more modern idea of preventing the man from becoming sick.

The problem, it must, however, be admitted, is a difficult one in many ways. In peace conditions the medical staff is rather too large than too small; for all that, for modern war conditions it is probably hopelessly inadequate.

It is more or less accepted that in modern battle the wounded must lie where they fall. Theoretically, at any rate, this is mitigated by certain instructions in First Aid, and the furnishing of hypodermic syringes to one member of each gun’s crew for use on the badly wounded. The days when lint was forbidden as a useless extravagance, and sponges were restricted for the sake of economy, have indeed gone, just as surely as has the old-time surgeon who, unable to afford his own instruments, had to borrow from the carpenter an ordinary saw to amputate a limb! But—relatively to shore-practice of equal date—the naval medical service is not much less hampered than it was a hundred odd years ago; and a really big naval action is likely enough to see as much superfluous agony (relatively speaking) as in the old days!

The true position of the surgeon in a warship is not recognised; the official duties of a doctor are officially purely “curative,” very rarely “preventive.” Some or most of this is due to the prevalence of old-fashioned obsolete ideas in high quarters; but some also is to be laid at the door of the “Churches,” and their fancy for differentiating between diseases. The matter is not one that admits of further discussion here; but the enforcement upon naval surgeons (who have to deal with large bodies of men crowded into spaces necessarily favourable for contagion) of conditions which, rightly or wrongly, are deemed to be for the public’s ultimate welfare on shore, are a terrible menace to naval efficiency. Things are indeed bettering in this respect, but still somewhat slowly.

After the Great Mutiny of 1797 the pay of the men was approximately trebled. Although “extras” have since been added, the normal pay has remained to all intents and purposes stationary, while if qualifications be taken into account it has actually decreased, since the “ordinary” of to-day is called on to do just about what the “able seamen” of a hundred odd years had to do.

The respective rates45 are:—

Since the cost of living has certainly gone up at least twenty per cent. in the interim, and since the normal increase is undoubtedly under that, a prima facie case is certainly made out for those who contend that the British sailor is, if anything, worse paid than he was a hundred years ago.

The board and lodging which he obtains of course adds to the actual total; but the fact remains that the board and lodging labourer of to-day, who takes no risks of his life, is now as much ahead of the sailor as he was behind him in 1797. And “uniform” means a heavy extra expense for clothing.

In 1912 the men of the Navy definitely asked for a twenty per cent. increase of pay. It amounted to nothing but an adjustment of 1797 conditions to modern ones. They did not obtain it—unasked for off-chances of “Democracy on the Quarter Deck” were given instead. Later on a 3d. a day concession was made to able seamen after the completion of six years’ more service.

There at the moment the question remains. It has to a certain extent been obscured by question of naval punishments; about which a good deal of nonsense has been written by people who in some cases should know better.

Naval punishments are severe; but discipline necessitates punishments, and these have been regularly toned down to the spirit of the age. The real and genuine grievances of to-day are almost identical with the genuine grievances of which the “prime seamen” complained in 1797:—pay, leave, and the treatment of men who happen to come into the hands of the ship’s medical staff through no fault of their own.

In 1912 a Commission was enquiring into punishments, and further reductions in them to suit modern ideas resulted; but it is by no means certain that any advantage in efficiency will be acquired therefrom. Naval Discipline—no matter how harsh—is a tricky thing to tamper with. The highest possible ideal of Discipline was reached by the Japanese, who, previous to the war with Russia, ran their Navy on “the honour of the flag” lines; and presumably had some similar system in the Army. In what is certainly the most patriotic land of our era this succeeded in peace time. Yet in the attacks on Port Arthur, when a great assault was made, when the time came to cease bombarding the hostile position, the guns were turned on the possible line of retreat, ensuring that for a man to retire was more dangerous to him than to go forward. In the case of the Japanese it was perhaps an unnecessary precaution, but it was borrowed from old-time precautionary usage in Europe.

Every system of discipline is based on the fact that either sooner or later there will be some man who will be frightened enough to turn tail, and lead others to follow his example, unless there is something still worse to stop him. On this foundation stone the most seemingly trivial items of discipline are based.

No normal man, when it comes to the point, cares to risk his life or limbs. Here and there an individual of the “don’t care” order is to be found; but generally speaking he is an anomaly. In the ordinary way the safest assumption is that he will think more of his skin than anything else—and on this theory all systems of discipline are founded. All rely on the ultimate fact that “it is worse to go back than to go forward.” The curse of the present age is the semi-educated humanitarian who criticises the means (often crude enough) without taking the end into proper account. At the other extreme are those who, though familiar with the story of the Russian sentry regularly placed to protect a favourite flower which had died two hundred years before, understand that there is a reason for everything, but fail to realise fully that conditions change.

Many works have been written on the tactical and strategical superiority of those who have led British Fleets to victory; but in the great majority of cases there is little to show that the majority of our admirals were really more clever than many of their opponents. He would be a bold man who set out to prove in black and white that Collingwood had more brain than Villeneuve, or would have done better than that unlucky admiral had they changed places with each other. Nor would he have much more luck in attempting to prove that at any era in history British sailors were really braver than French ones.

In one critical period of English history Drake appeared—and the most lasting sign of “how he did it” was “spit and polish”! In another dark time came St. Vincent—and his sign manual was “tailoring” and “routine.” In yet another critical hour came Nelson who supplied enthusiasm by his care for the health of his men. But it was Nelson who went out of his way to congratulate St. Vincent on hanging mutineers out of hand on a Sunday instead of keeping them till the Monday! These three great men knew what they relied upon.

The real secret of British naval success has surely lain in the possession of naval architects able to create the kind of ship best calculated to stand hammering, and hard-hearted folk in authority who created a discipline which, however unreasonable some of it may now seem, has ever ensured victory.

Superior British courage then, as now, was a pleasing topic for the music hall or its equivalent; but the real driving power of the British battle fleet in the past was “discipline.” Those who to-day would amend or alter even the most seemingly ridiculous anomalies of discipline will do well to ponder and walk warily, lest they upset greater things than they wot of—lest they damage the keystone embodied in the crude words of that unknown stoker who said: “It’s just this—do your blanky job.”