Samuel Pepys Volunteers

Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (R.N.V.R.)

This Naval History continues on from: "R.N.R."

Samuel Pepys Volunteers: In Charles II's time Samuel Pepys began to produce officers for the future of the Permanent National Maritime Fighting Force. The Royal Navy.

He began the training, making them all start from the bottom. And that gave an opportunity, while they grew up, for more volunteering in the Elizabethan sense. And they came from the Merchant Navy in their droves, because the fleet was large and the demand for them was great.

The Second and Third Dutch wars required officers to take part in the rough-and-tumble of the sea-fights. Keen young bloods crowded into the ships to serve, if only for one campaign, under such distiguished patrons as the Duke of York and Albemarle, and Prince Rupert.

The very name "volunteer" had a new lease of life. But they were not quite the calibre of the Elizabethan Voluntary Gentlemen. They were interested in the job, but were not committed to it, they also lacked the knowledge required; they were, when all was said and done, fair-weather sailors.

R.N.R.

Pepys wanted rid of the fair weather sailors

And that was Samuel Pepys opinion, and he soon had his way; he dropped something like a guillotine upon them. He did not abolish the name: he retained it for his own use, abolishing only the type which had borne it.

He made strict rules-enforcing conformity without regard to natural variation or individuality, governing their maximum and minimum ages, so that, when he emerged from that drastic ordeal, the Volunteer was transformed into something very much like the modern Naval Cadet.

Without doubt the most distinguished of this group of pre-Pepysian Restoration Gentlemen was one who, as a young man of twenty-two, received his baptism of fire in the naval battle of Solebay in 1672. But it was in the land-service that he made his name and living to become the great Duke of Marlborough.

As Pepys's professional young men grew up, the fortunes of our Royal Naval Voluntry Reserve type waned. But they did not vanish, partly because, as in the case of the Royal Naval Reserve element, there was the occasional need for a naval expansion on a scale which demanded the drawing upon reserves.

But, just as fast, or just as slow, as the professional came through, so did the need for the Amateur to die away.

The Volunteers kept turning-up

Towards the end of the seventeenth century there was a period when there were gentlemen and there were seamen in the navy of Charles II. But the seamen were not gentlemen; and the gentlemen were not seamen.

There was a certain amount of truth in this, though even then it was distinctly less true than it had once been. But, very soon, it was destined to be true no longer.

During the eighteenth century, the men who were once called Volunteers still turned up in the new navy. There were two types of them. There were those who went to sea for "the experience," in much the same spirit as they went for the Grand Tour.

These would be, such young gentlemen as commanded influence in the right quarter. They did not, as a rule, stay-or even intend to stay-for long, and they were not in the main, much missed in the service when they left it.

But there were a few of a much more deserving type-men, who in all but name were in the true line of Royal Naval Voluntary Reserve officers. These were the people who, while not feeling inclined to make the Navy their life's profession, were drawn into it, of their own free will, from more or less patriotic motives upon the outbreak of war.

Such men usually, left it again when the war in question was over, but sometimes they would make good in it, or be so unexpectedly attracted to the life, that they would remain therein.

This type of man was never common: nor, is it easy to distinguish him from the man who entered the profession intending to stay there, but who later changed his mind.

They were attracted by personal gain

Captain Marryat went to sea not so much with the intention of making a career out of it, but "for the fun of the thing," and only because he was tired of what he was doing on land. Nor did he stick it out, he left the Service as soon as he came into his money.

The Privateer: especially the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century specimens. The earlier ones, of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, engaged in both war and trade. Many of these privateers were obviously Volunteers, both in the literal sense that no-one pressed them into the service, and in the Elizabethan sense that they had incomes.

Patriotism and profit were doubtless still present as the main motives, though another, by no means unknown to the elizabethans, was also there-excitement and the sheer love of adventure. And, without being overmuch subjected to the somewhat irksome trammels of Naval discipline, But they did do their bit.

They were a part of Britain's war effort, though often a somewhat unco-ordinated and wasteful part. This particular source of potential Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve supply came to a dead end when the whole business of privateering was abolished among European nations by the treaty of Paris in 1856.

The Modern R.N.V.R.

We have hinted that, in all periods of their existance before the days of Total War, the regular supply of professional officers was quite sufficient to meet all ordinary demands. And we shall see that it was too often, more than efficient, with a great deal of accompanying hardships and unemployment.

This was the underlying reason why the modern R.N.V.R. was so slow, in making its debut. Once more we must postpone any detailed account of the "Reserve" problem which began to loom large in the eyes of our ancestors about a hundred and fifty years ago.

All that need be recorded here is that the modern Volunteer Reserve was even further delayed by the ill-success of two previous experiments which failed.

The first was initiated in 1853, when the name re-emerged. The body in question was to be known as the Royal Naval Coast Volunteers, and it was nearer to the modern R.N.V.R. name than anything else, since its members were drawn from the seafaring elements of the population. Its duties were, mainly those of Coastal Defence. It was disbanded in 1873.

But in the self same year, there appeared a new body, to be known as the Royal Naval Artillery Volunteer Reserve. The scope of this corps' activities was more extensive. The idea was to provide trained gunners-both officers and men for services within home waters as well as ashore.

But the scheme was scarcely a happy one. It was shipwrecked on the shoals of misunderstanding and jealousy. Nor was the work for him very liable to attract as an officer the kind of individual whom the authorities hoped to obtain-the enthusiastic sea-amateur who wanted to help at sea. So this body perished also-in 1892.

But it was certainly, this time, a true forerunner of the modern R.N.V.R., the type of person recruited for both beeing just the same. We have now reached the year 1903, the point, at which we first took up the Volunteer story.

The third Volunteer succeeded in War

The brilliant success of the third attempt then started needs no emphasizing here. It is all very recent history and very well known.

Yet it should be recorded that there has been one immense change in the modern R.N.V.R. since its inception-a change which has completely revolutionized the nature of all R.N.V.R. officer-personnel. And it has come about, mainly, as a result of the Second World War.

The force was by no means large when it began its life: nor did it show any signs at first of that vast expansion which it was destined to achieve. For the original category of person expected to join it was not great in numbers.

The officers were, men whose basic professions had only this in common-that they were non-maritime. Yet they were also to a certain extent men who were sea-amateurs, sea-lovers of one kind or another.

Amateur yachtsmen and the like: anyone from the wealthy man who liked cruising in his big steam-yacht to the man who loved sailing for a hobby, or who delighted in spending his holidays pottering about in a boat on the water. Love of the water was the one and only common factor.

The experience of the First World War was to show the incalculable value of such men, especially when it was a question of little ships, the craft to which the majority were accustomed, and which suited to perfection their particular brand of seamanship.

The enthusiastic amateur of peace-time soon showed himself to be a brilliant exponent of a certain type of war-service-one which was becoming of greater and paramount importance with the deployment of new weapons such as mine, torpedo and submarine, and the need for anti-mine, anti-torpedo and anti-submarine development.

The result was an enormous numerical increase in this particular form of Reserve. In August 1914, its strength was 2,345: by November 1918, it had risen to 50,218.

World War II led to a greater increase

Although there was a great demand for officers to fight, the Merchant Navy must still function at full blast, and so must not be denuded of its officers beyond a certain point. But there was no limit set upon the R.N.V.R.

It's true that the supply of men of that stamp who had actual sea-experience was, a limited one; but, it was soon discovered that the numbers available from all of the old sources would be suficient for the demand.

The authorities decided to make the R.N.V.R. a sort of beneficiary to inherit all the extra duties when must needs arise. They decided not to make any considerable increases during the war in the numbers of its whole-time professional Royal Navy officers.

It also decided not to obtain the additional personnel that it required at the expense of the Merchant Navy. it could do that but only at the country's peril. It aimed at making the R.N.V.R. so elastic that it could absorb all new increases as they became necessary.

It was this, which went far to change the nature of the R.N.V.R. officer-personnel: for long before the process of expansion was complete, the reservoir of experienced sea-loving amateurs had dried up.

It would be unrealistic to pretend that all those who wore the R.N.V.R. stripes in the Second World War were yachtsmen or sailing men. Yet the Volunteer principle remained strong throughout.

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The Volunteer was a true Volunteer

No man need become an officer against his will. So it remains true that evey officer is a volunteer. Such was the numerical expansion of the R.N.V.R. that, towards the end of the conflict, the percentages of executive officers belonging to the R.N.V.R. was 74 per cent.

A phrase, whose truth has not been verifiable until now, since events have never occured which could put it squarely to the test: "The Sea is in their Blood."

It must be so. The sea must be in the blood of Britains everywhere, whether they live beside it, or as far away as they can get on this small island. We were entitled to expect the sea-loving element to take to the Little Ships like a duck to water.

And so they did. But then all of the rest did too; they all seemed to take to it with equal kindness, as though they had a lifetime's experience behind them.

Truly, it has been fashionable to say that: "The Sea is in their Blood." It is really rather satisfactory to find that we have been speaking the truth all along!

The continuation of this Naval History Will Be: "Peace Maker"

Pepys Volunteers Peace Maker

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