ABSTRACT
The introduction of the Britannia system brought a degree of uniformity and order to the entry and initial training of the young officer who, by the time the ship arrived at Dartmouth in 1863, was joining aged 14 or 15 and spending a year on board. On completion he transferred to the Fleet where, as he could not sit the lieutenant’s exam for at least four years, the process of education and training continued. The experience of ‘fleet time’, a term in naval training that endures to the present day, was remarkably varied. Naval cadets and midshipmen of the 1850s and 1860s were most likely to serve in larger ships where there was an increased likelihood of the services of a naval instructor. On foreign stations a large vessel, usually an elderly wooden walled ‘liner’ converted to screw propulsion, would serve as the flagship but as a general rule big ships were based closer to home. The larger and more modern the vessel the more likely she was, in the 1860s, to be deployed in the Channel or the Mediterranean and it was here that the majority of young officers spent at least part of their training. Nevertheless there was little commonality of experience. A draft to a capital ship in the Channel in 1863 might well imply service in an ‘ironclad’ – a revolutionary new warship capable of 14 or 15 knots under steam power and heavily protected by a combination of wrought iron and teak. A comparable post in the Mediterranean in the same year would mean service in one of eight screw converted, wooden walled men o’ war, the oldest dating from 1827. The last of these on station, HMS Victoria, a 102 gun three-decker, served as a flagship until 1867 and was probably retained, as one commentator suggests, not because of her fighting ability but because of the superior living accommodation she offered the Commander in Chief and his staff.1
