ABSTRACT
The duties of most warrant officers included a good deal of store- keeping and the keeping of accounts was a major part of the responsibilities of pursers, gunners, carpenters and boatswains. Though gunners and boatswains were generally promoted from among the seamen, they had to be literate in order to keep their accounts, even if a certain amount of the writing could be delegated to their storekeepers and assistants - the ship‘s steward under the purser and the yeomen of the various store rooms. Such delegation was expressly forbidden in the 1806 Regulations which decreed that ‘Every officer shall be responsible for the conduct of his yeoman, to whom he is not to entrust the keeping of his accounts‘.1 However, this did not completely exclude the possibility of the yeoman writing the accounts under the close supervision of his superior officer, as MacDonough kept the Boatswain‘s accounts in the Eurydice [27, Introduction F]. The purser was of course responsible for the food and drink in the hold, while the gunner, carpenter and boatswain each had a storeroom forward on the orlop deck, considered by Edward Riou to be ‘abundantly large for what they are intended to contain.‘ [6, article VIII]
