ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses at the continuity in the early nineteenth century of certain myths and attitudes surrounding the Navy, and also at changes in perception caused initially by the growing prominence of the army and then by peacetime conditions. The post-war Navy was slowly and painfully forced to adjust to a different, more commercial world and to reassess its relevance to a post-war society that had fewer pressing martial preoccupations. After the war, the Navy substantially ceased to be regarded as an arena of opportunity where men of worth but little wealth could make their mark. In 1823 the Painted Hall of the Greenwich Naval Hospital, which had been unsuitable for further use as a refectory ever since the painter Thornhill had finished his masterpiece there, was set up as a national gallery of marine painting, commemorating the public services of the Royal Navy.
