ABSTRACT
For centuries seamen in the Navies of the world have been seen as little more than an inconvenience necessary for a ship to fire guns and launch missiles. This chapter looks first at the history: where have we come from. It looks at what has been achieved and the driving forces behind that change, reporting on the current view from an existing warship’s crew and focuses on what further changes might take place. Two hundred years ago the Royal Navy (RN) was attractive because it offered better conditions. Historically a RN ship had a large number of crewmembers living in a small space. A warship is sometimes compared to a village or small town. It is imagined to be self-contained providing, on board, all the services needed by the crew. To understand more about off-duty life on a current warship, a survey was undertaken with a sample of 12 crew on a Royal Navy Frigate.
