Royal Naval Reserve

The (R.N.R.) Officers

This Naval History follows on from "Admiralship"

The Great Slump of the first two Stuarts hit the officers with a double blow. If they were merchant-owners they were ruined; if they were merchant-skippers they were unemployed, while their Royal Naval Reserve activities were reduced to practically nothing by the fact that very few sea-operations were being undertaken.

These sad facts only serve as another illustration, of the intimate relationship which must always exist between a Merchant and a Fighting Navy, if either is to retain its health.

The ship-money fleet brought about a slightly better state of affairs, both by improving trading conditions, and by giving more chance of employment in the fighting ships.

Admiralship

War brought opportunities

The Civil War brought more opportunities still, while the great building programme of the Commonwealth Government, was in progress it was accompanied immediately by a first-class naval war, which once more brought to the fore the Merchant Navy Officer in his Royal Naval reserve capacity.

Among the naval leaders whom these upheavals threw to the top were many who were, basically, merchants with sea-experience or merchant-seaman officers; men who had received their sea-training soley in "trade."

There was that rough diamond William Batten, who was more resposible than anyone else for securing the fleet for the Parliment in 1642.

Then there was Richard Badiley, a tough upholder of England's honour and interests in the Mediterranean, and those two great seamen-were probably the best seaman of the period.

William Penn, John Lawson and Nehemiah Bourne, were the "Big Three" they were the original Generals-at-sea whom first commanded the New Model Navy. Richard Dean, even Robert Blake, greatest of them all would not be out of place in that gallery, for there is reason to belive that he spent many years in the "Trade."

Merchant to Royal

These merchantmen are not quite so obviously "R.N.R." as their Elizabethan counterparts. They came from the Merchant Navy, or something very much like it. But few of them returned to it, because it was in their day that the Permanent National Maritime Force arrived, and its very permanence ment that there would be permanent posts in it for those as proved worthy of it, as these did.

So the merchantmen came and they stayed. Their modern counterparts is the R.N.R. officer who "turns over" to the Royal Navy in the course, or at the close of hostilities. With Charles II, came the second half of the great naval revolution begun by the Commonwealth Government.

Cromwell had produced the ships of Englands new and permanent navy; it was Samuel Pepys who created a professional corps of officers to command them.

The effect of this upon the men was profound and lasting. But it was not instantaneous; for Pepys's new officers started from the bottom, so that the Penns and the Lawsons could finnish their time unchallenged by the professional element.

The professionals arrived

When they went, they were not, for the most part, renewed. The members of the more professional corps grew up in their places, and round about the end of the century they were reaching the top.

The R.N.R. element did not dissapear; but it grew, numerically, less. From providing, the majority of all officers in the fleet, it found itself supplying an ever-decreasing proportion, until its contribution at the end of the eighteenth century was reduced to a tricle.

There always remained some "turning-over" from Merchant to Royal Navy, and some sustained oscillation from one service to the other and back again. Admiral John Campbell (1720-90) and that excellent navigator, Captain James Cook (1728-79) are such. Both started life as merchant-service seaman.

Of the "oscillators," John Benbow (1653-1702) is probably the most famous example. He "turned-over" each way at least twice, yet he rose to command a fleet. Yet this is hardly a fair case, since his rise was occurring in the period where the first of the new "professionals" were just arriving.

"Merchant to Royal," when it occurs, will almost always be at the beginning of a war, when an expansion of the fighting fleet is in progress. The "Royal to Merchant" turn-over, on the other hand, was sometimes quite considerable after the close of war, especially a major one; and more especially if a long period of peace chanced to follow.

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Peace lasted too long

In peace-time many ships were laid up, and there were not many posts going, with much unemployment for the professional officers. There was one such occasion after the Spanish Succession War (1702-13), when peace lasted for twenty-six years, and many a poor Navy Officer who had to earn his living proceeded to do so in the Merchant Service.

Another, and much later, example arose in the even longer peace-period (1815-53) which succeeded the Napoleonic War. Where "turn-overs," and constant oscillations, were frequent, and remained for a long time, was among those not-quite-commission-officers, the Masters.

There was never a surplus of them. Competition for the services of the better ones was always keen between Merchant and Royal Navies.

Professionally they were interchangeable, because the difference between navigating a warship and a merchant ship was negligible; and this was very fortunate for the Master, who need have no fear of unemployment which was the bogey of the Commissioned Officers.

If the Admiralty had no post for him, or if some ship-owner offered him better terms, he would turn over to the other service, very sure that the Admiralty would have him back again on the first approach of war.

The long peace-period of the ninteenth century, with its mass unemployment, taught the Government much; and, among other things, led to the establishment, in 1859, of the Royal Naval Reserve in its modern form.

The modern R.N.R. had to get along for the first two years of its life without any officers at all, the first of these being authorised in 1861.

The continuation of this Naval History will be: "Pepys Volunteers"

Royal Naval Reserve Pepys Volunteers

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