Download - Royal Australian Navy

all i ever knew about naval ranks, i learnt from star trek
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Finally in the 15th century, in the space of a single generation, warship building
changed from the single mast, Viking ‘longship’ design to the Mediterranean multimasted,
square-rigged design. Further technological advances followed quickly on
the heels of this change. Among these, perhaps the change with the most impact
was the square mainsail being divided into a course and topsail, which made tacking
much more practical. Eventually the heavy hulled design was replaced by the lighter
design of framed vessels which allowed smaller, faster and more manoeuvrable
ships to be built. All these advances required more specialisation of the part of the
professional sailors of the crew and the lack of oars required less skill on the part of
the so-called ‘ordinary’ seaman.
It is during this period of large-scale naval expansion that we see the formalisation of
the rank structure into three distinct organisations; Officers, Masters and Ratings. In
civilian society, formal schooling was available only for a privileged few and for the
rest the system of Apprentice, Journeyman and Master flourished. Even though sailors
had no formal guild to oversee the training of future sailors, the three rankings of the
navy took to this system like (if you’ll forgive the affectation) a duck to water. Ordinary
Seamen, either impressed or volunteer, would train to become Able Seamen and those
Able Seamen would continue to train in order to be able to give orders like Officers,
thus becoming ‘Petty’ Officers. Apprentice Shipwrights would train to become Masters,
as would Sailmakers, Bo’suns and the other ‘technical’ trades aboard a warship. Last,
but certainly not least, the Officers would train new Officers in the finer points of
command and navigation. Captains of ships could aspire to the Command of Fleets
and possibly the Admiralty itself (provided their social standing was high enough).
The technology of the navy and society at large remained unchanged for many years
and therefore little changed through the years in either the structure of society or that
of naval ranks. The only major change in this period was when the technical expertise
of the navy became formalised in the establishment of the Warrant Officer ranks. The
next big change would come with the dawn of the age of steam.
Evolution
With the new technology of the Industrial Revolution came world wide changes.
Although slow to start, sweeping changes eventually made their way through every
level of society. The old tradesman apprentice/journeyman/master progression all
but disappeared and was replaced by compulsory schooling as the so-called ‘middle
class’ expanded to include everyone but the very extremes of the social scale.
The naval rank structure reacted by eliminating the Warranted ranks. Those with
wardroom equivalent ranks were absorbed into the Officer ranks and those without
this equivalency were positioned as the cream of the Non-Commissioned Members
(NCM); Chief Petty Officers.