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This thesis presents an analysis of the 1797 fleet mutinies at Spithead and the Nore based on an application of methodologies drawn from social, economic, and cultural history. Using both quantitative and qualitative sources, I present a new interpretation of these momentous events that reveals the centrality of perceptions of fairness and ‘good usage’ to their causation, course, and legacy with implications for historiographies of labour relations and popular protest. I have analysed the evidence used in previous studies to support the interpretation that the mutinies were revolutionary in their intentions and concluded that this does not provide a credible case. For the first time, I have quantified the impact of the stagnation of sailors’ wages between 1653 and 1797 on their purchasing power and conclude that this was a, but not the, cause of mutiny. Through the study of mutineer writings, rhetoric, and behaviour, I argue that insult and hurt pride were key motivators of mutiny and that relative rather than absolute naval conditions were pivotal causes of dissatisfaction. I assert that complex social inversions were employed by mutineer leaders to create legitimacy and encourage obedience towards their regime while minimising the need for violence or coercion. The practical challenges inherent to daily life during mutiny are contended to have encouraged continuity and moderation on both sides. Far from a ‘terror’, the judicial response to the mutinies was, I conclude, both pragmatic and conciliatory, while also within precedent for naval justice and reflective of judicial practice in civil society. The public perceptions of the mutinies are found to have been hotly contested and rehabilitation of the navy had to wait for redemption provided by victory at sea. Frequent comparisons are drawn between naval practice and the wider attitudes and prevailing circumstances in British society on shore.

This thesis focuses on the foreign seamen who served in the Royal Navy during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1793-1815). It is a transnational social history of eighteenth-century state power, warfare, and migration, examining the legal terms of 'foreigners'' naval employment, the political and diplomatic background, cultural and social integration, and the demographic characteristics of these men. The conclusions are as follows. First, studying these aspects transforms our conception of the Navy. Simply taking for granted the Navy's 'Britishness', and failing to explore its position in an international maritime labour marketplace, can leave our understanding of its social history incomplete. Second, the power of the eighteenth-century state had to make important compromises, when it came to the cross-border movement of certain individuals, because of its need for resources. In times pre-dating the rise of the modern anti-mercenary norm, cosmopolitanism was disciplined and accommodated in ingenious and flexible ways within the Navy - a military institution which, albeit part of a transnational maritime world, was by definition a heavily 'nationalised' space. Third, this thesis shows the methodological value of deconstructing the term 'foreigner', as it developed in late eighteenth-century Europe and America, using the Navy as a case study. To avoid essentialising the concept of 'foreigner', each chapter tackles a different meaning of the word, questioning how far the characteristics attached to it would have affected someone's situation in the Navy. Chapter 1 shows that recruits with birthplace in other countries were not radically dissimilar to their British colleagues in age, skill, or rating in the Navy. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 argue that legal and cultural 'foreignness' (defined in terms of language, religion, and racialised physical difference) was easily ignored, bypassed or even put to use by the Navy, interested in maximising its efficient use of manpower. Chapters 5 and 6 are case studies on the integration of southern and northern European seamen respectively. Chapter 7 demonstrates that 'foreignness' defined in contingent terms, the lived social experience of immigration, travel, and displacement, was a crucial respect in which 'foreign' sailors may have been unlike their colleagues, dealing with different options, needs, motivations, and opportunity costs.

Examining Britain's position in 1920s East Asia at a point amid changes in the international balance of power, this thesis bridges the gap between the existing imperial and naval accounts of a key transition point in global history. In doing so, it focuses upon the foremost organisation involved in maintaining and supporting the peripheral regions of imperial influence, the Royal Navy's China Station. The thesis provides an important new segment to help in explaining the wider story of the slow decline of British imperial and naval dominance in the 1920s. Foremost among the findings is an emphasis on how heavily inter-related Britain's strategies for China and Japan were during the decade. Indeed, China was expected by the Admiralty to play a pivotal role in any future relationship between the British Empire and the increasingly expansionist Japan, which adds a significant new angle to existing discussion of Britain's far eastern defence strategy. Providing fresh insights into how those grand strategies were implemented in practice, the thesis shows how naval officers serving in the region willingly and repeatedly deviated from official policy on a day-to-day basis in order to assist their counterparts from friendly powers. Likewise, the evolving threats posed by state and sub-state actors in China are shown to have led to the deployment of vast Royal Navy task force to Shanghai in 1927, which is now generally overlooked and misunderstood. That event marked the last time Britain was able to confidently display its global naval dominance to the world. Among the more controversial findings, the thesis reveals how the Admiralty secretly circumvented the Washington Treaty by developing military aviation capabilities at Hong Kong under the guise of imperial policing. In doing so it provides the first clear evidence that alongside Germany and Japan, Britain was also actively contravening the post-1918 disarmament treaties it had only recently signed. Away from preparations for another major conflict, the thesis also provides a fresh examination of the contrasting accounts of two violent clashes involving Britain in 1920s China. In doing so, the thesis shows that it is possible to establish a more balanced understanding of events such as the Nanjing and Wanxian incidents, despite the highly polarised accounts of what happened. Finally, the human side of the story is explored, during which the thesis discusses changing attitudes towards and use of Victorian gunboat diplomacy. Moreover, the stresses of commanding gunboats in such isolated circumstances are shown to have pushed some young officers beyond breaking point, with disastrous consequences for themselves and others. Archival material that is entirely new to histories of the Royal Navy has been used throughout the thesis, adding crucial details such as the important role of Treaty Port volunteer corps in influencing warship deployments. Likewise, by delving deep into the naval archives, the thesis helps to move the imperial histories beyond the wall of steel and blue uniforms to consider the Royal Navy as a complex entity containing a diverse set of individuals. In combination the thesis provides the first detailed examination of the Royal Navy's everyday work maintaining the British Empire in East Asia against the wider backdrop of the transformative changes in world geopolitics.

This thesis uses the Indigenous Australian object collections of the British Museum as a stimulus to explore the history of ethnographic collecting in Australia by the Royal Navy, in the period 1772-1855. From ordinary sailors to the curious surgeons and naturalists who accompanied naval expeditions, object collecting made visible the tangled scientific, imperial and commercial influences which shaped early colonial encounters in Australia and throughout the British Empire. Ethnographic collections, and particularly those at the British Museum, continue to mediate the postcolonial relationship between Britain and Australia, and yet almost nothing is known of the circumstances of their provenance, or of the actors who collected them and dispersed them within museums; the agency of Indigenous Australians themselves is also little understood. The thesis begins by arguing that scholars have struggled to move beyond the famous collections of Captain James Cook, and observes too that many have misunderstood Joseph Banks' later contribution to naval ethnography. Focusing upon the principal expeditions made to Australia between 1800 and 1850, the thesis charts the growth of object collecting among a range of naval actors interested less in the pursuit of profit than in the expansion and consolidation of a new form of knowledge. Through its study of ethnographic collecting, the thesis offers an original perspective upon early colonial Australian history. The thesis is framed in particular as a contribution to recent work on subaltern knowledges and agencies, both European and indigenous, and adds too to our growing appreciation of the nineteenth-century Royal Navy's participation in and direction of imperial British science.

This thesis applies the theoretical perspective of Bourdieu to investigate the development of a Royal Navy habitus. It is one of the first studies to uncover distinct social processes within the Royal Navy that otherwise would have largely remained unknown to a wider academic audience. An ethnographic methodology was used to investigate the attitudes of serving members of the Royal Navy using an approach that was informed by the Biographical Narrative Interview Method (Wengraf 2001). In my analysis, I constructed a complex picture of how individuals develop a particular habitus, showing how the interplay between the institutional and individual habitus influences the process and pattern of their choice making. Through the development of the institutional habitus and its internalisation by each person, the previously unthinkable becomes possible, the possible becomes routine and not doing the routine, unthinkable. This sets the pattern for subsequent behaviours which are passed on to the next generation. Although each reproduction is subtly different it falls within the broader outline of the institutional habitus as constituted at that time. The Royal Navy creates aspiration through division by developing competition between the different ranks of its personnel within the organisation. Strong familial relationships, kinship bonds and the development of an affective dimension through traineeship produce the Royal Navy habitus that becomes the structuring principle for agents’ future career development. Through the imposition of an institutionally defined cultural capital, agents engage in this process in order to realise their career ambitions.

The Laird rams, built from 1862-1865, reflected concepts of naval power in transition from the broadside of multiple guns, to the rotating turret with only a few very heavy pieces of ordnance. These two ironclads were experiments built around the two new offensive concepts for armoured warships at that time: the ram and the turret. These sister armourclads were a collection of innovative designs and compromises packed into smaller spaces. A result of the design leap forward was they suffered from too much, too soon, in too limited a hull area. The turret ships were designed and built rapidly for a Confederate Navy desperate for effective warships. As a result of this urgency, the pair of twin turreted armoured rams began as experimental warships and continued in that mode for the next thirty five years. They were armoured ships built in secrecy, then floated on the Mersey under the gaze of international scrutiny and suddenly purchased by Britain to avoid a war with the United States. Once purchased, they were largely forgotten. Historians rarely mention these two sister ironclads and if mentioned at all, they are given short shrift. Built with funds obtained in part through the Confederate Erlanger loan, these ironclads were constructed at Lairds shipyard in Birkenhead and represented an advanced concept of ironclad construction through new proposals involving turrets, the ram, heavy guns and tripod masts on an armoured ship, as advocated by Captain Cowper Coles, R.N. They proved too much of a leap in one design but when their roles caught up to the revised designs, the ships were modified to meet new requirements. After several mission and design changes they then performed to standard. This belated success occurred when the concept of the ideal armoured warship was in flux throughout the middle Victorian years.

This thesis looks at how the Scottish state, with a long coastline, got away with a minimal naval footprint in a period when European navies were becoming large permanent institutions. Increasingly, Scottish authorities did this by relying upon the English Royal Navy. This thesis hopes to go some way to filling the lacuna in the historiography of the Royal Navy in the seventeenth century regarding Scotland. The Royal Navy in Scotland is used as a prism through which Scottish and British state development in the period of the union of the crowns is looked at. From the standpoint of 1707 Scotland is generally seen as being an underdeveloped state. Explanations of why this was tend to point to the regal union as a cause due to the removal of key elements of statehood to London, in particular the state's 'monopoly of violence'. This thesis suggests that Scotland did not lose its monopoly of violence and that, instead of being a sign of the regal union's failure, underdevelopment actually indicates success. The Royal Navy shielded Scotland from much of the maritime insecurity which would generate demands to create a significant Scottish naval force. However, this relative success was not indicative of British development providing structures to allow the Royal Navy to react well to Scottish defence needs. Multiple monarchy was a poor organisational structure and AngloScottish communication on naval matters was either poor or non-existent. Instead, geopolitical and strategic factors meant that much Royal Naval provision principally aimed at English defence also helped Scotland. That these factors did not lead to equal protection against all types of maritime threats offers an alternative explanation for the maritime tensions between England and Scotland in the 1690s which Eric Graham identifies with the imposition of English mercantilism on Scotland.

The identification of metabolic diseases is a crucial aspect of osteoarchaeological analysis and of paleopathological studies. This study is specifically concerned with the study of scurvy and its bony manifestation. This investigation considers the recognition of the bony lesions of scurvy in adult skeletons that originate from English archaeological contexts dating to the Post Medieval period. In order to identify scorbutic bony lesions, assemblages were analysed that derived from the Georgian period Navy that were known to suffer from endemic scurvy, namely Haslar hospital near Portsmouth and Stonehouse hospital in Plymouth. These assemblages were complemented by two Non-Naval skeletal collections of a broadly contemporaneous time period, one of which was a prison assemblage from Oxford Castle in Oxford and the other was from Darwen, Lancashire and consisted of a Primitive Methodist cemetery. For the purpose of this study, an extensive literature review was carried out and a specially modified scurvy recording form was created. In total three hundred and fifty-eight skeletons were analysed using the scurvy recording form on which a total of twenty-one potential scorbutic indicators were scored. The data was then subject to statistical analysis and a set of primary and secondary scorbutic indicators was established. The primary scorbutic lesions were femur, sphenoid, posterior maxilla, scapula, endocranial and mandible. Nine secondary lesions were also established and these were lesions of the foot, humerus, ulna, radius, hand, clavicle, innominate, fibula and the ectocranial surface of the skull. In total, 66.7% of the Haslar assemblage was found to have suffered from scurvy, followed by Plymouth with 20.6%, Darwen with 16.4% and Oxford Castle with 7.9%. It was found that scurvy could be identified in adult skeletal material through the recognition of a number of lesions that could not be attributed to any other disease process. The results indicated that scurvy was present in all of the skeletal collections studied but was more common in the Naval assemblages. This is an important development in the detection of scurvy in the archaeological record and is crucial in the reconstruction of past diets and metabolic disease patterns.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century a burgeoning global private military sector is increasingly involved in areas of defence and security that, up until recently, were popularly thought of as being within the monopolistic preserve of the nation state. Finding itself at the vanguard of profound political and economic change, today’s Royal Navy is increasingly reliant on relationships with the private sector that only thirty years ago would have seemed unimaginable to many commentators. As naval shipbuilding, dockyard refitting, logistics, training, and even warship ownership and manning, move from a unitary state to an increasingly self-organising private sector bounded by a differentiated and decentered polity, this thesis is concerned with boundaries of elite discourse on legitimacy in the political economy of Royal Navy and British naval sea power and their implications for New Public Management theory. At its core, the study presents original research into the attitudes of fifty elite opinion formers directly concerned with the discourse of Royal Navy modernisation and profiles their ideational boundaries concerning the political economy of force and violence. The thesis makes an original contribution to knowledge by presenting empirically and framing theoretically the ways in which elite naval attitudes to the political economy of legitimated force have changed and are evolving. The research is important because it challenges what many commentators have come to believe to be an a priori function of the nation state, namely, the monopoly use of force, with the actual views of those opinion formers who currently hold positions of power and influence in and around one of its core ‘ideal type’ institutions: the Royal Navy. The research is also significant because in attempting to clarify the conceptual boundaries of this elite discourse, it also presents a powerful critique of New Public Management with reference to the problematic dimensions of time, economic complexity and socio-political power.

Trauma is arguably the most comparative and least ambiguous of palaeopathological lesions. As such, it is an ideal vehicle for exploring the respective contributions and differences between historical and osteological approaches to health in the past. A direct comparison between historical and osteological assemblages is often impossible due to the lack of comparable data, or complicated by the very different perceptions, motivations and pre-occupations of past writers and present researchers. Nevertheless, where genuine opportunities exist to compare and contrast the alternative strands of evidence, it may lead to a much richer and more nuanced understanding of the past. This study uses trauma in the late 18th- to early 19th century British Royal Navy (R.N.) to explore the differences between the two disciplines, and through this process to come to a deeper understanding of the physical effects of a maritime lifestyle on the health of late 18th- to early 19th century R.N. seamen and marines. The 18th- and early 19th century R.N. is one of the best documented institutions of its day, with a large corpus of records accessible in the National Archives in Kew. Recent archaeological excavations in the burial grounds of the three R.N. hospitals of the 18th century in Britain- the Royal Hospitals Haslar in Gosport, Stonehouse in Plymouth and Greenwich Hospital in South-East London- have made available over 300 skeletons of seamen and marines, who were treated but died in these institutions. This study explores the osteological evidence for fractures and joint trauma patterning in 300 of these skeletons. Eighteenth century accounts of the privations and dangers of sailing a fighting ship are well supported osteologically by the presence of 926 fractures and 14 joint dislocations. Osteological trauma patterning was compared with historical data collated from the Haslar and Plymouth Hospital musters (1792-1824) and Entry Books of Greenwich Hospital (1749-1765). The most probable aetiology of injuries was explored using insights from modern medical and forensic research, and 18th century sea surgeons' journals. Falls accounted for a very high proportion of injuries in both datasets, as did crush injuries, and to a much lesser extent, battle trauma. Extremely high rates of nasal fractures, Bennett's fractures of the first metacarpal, and anterior rib fractures in the skeletal assemblages strongly suggest very high rates of casual interpersonal violence. Interestingly, these injuries were very seldom recorded in either sea surgeon or hospital records, possibly due to seamen's fear of punishment for transgressing official naval regulations against fighting. Several unusual fractures (such as Shepherd's fractures of the talus, and third metacarpal avulsion fractures) and bony modifications (such as shallow and unstable hip and shoulder joints, os acromiale and Eagle's syndrome) appear to be the consequences of engaging in a maritime lifestyle, often beginning in childhood or adolescence. Trauma is arguably the most comparative and least ambiguous of palaeopathological lesions. As such, it is an ideal vehicle for exploring the respective contributions and differences between historical and osteological approaches to health in the past. A direct comparison between historical and osteological assemblages is often impossible due to the lack of comparable data, or complicated by the very different perceptions, motivations and pre-occupations of past writers and present researchers. Nevertheless, where genuine opportunities exist to compare and contrast the alternative strands of evidence, it may lead to a much richer and more nuanced understanding of the past. This study uses trauma in the late 18th- to early 19th century British Royal Navy (R.N.) to explore the differences between the two disciplines, and through this process to come to a deeper understanding of the physical effects of a maritime lifestyle on the health of late 18th- to early 19th century R.N. seamen and marines. The 18th- and early 19th century R.N. is one of the best documented institutions of its day, with a large corpus of records accessible in the National Archives in Kew. Recent archaeological excavations in the burial grounds of the three R.N. hospitals of the 18th century in Britain- the Royal Hospitals Haslar in Gosport, Stonehouse in Plymouth and Greenwich Hospital in South-East London- have made available over 300 skeletons of seamen and marines, who were treated but died in these institutions. This study explores the osteological evidence for fractures and joint trauma patterning in 300 of these skeletons. Eighteenth century accounts of the privations and dangers of sailing a fighting ship are well supported osteologically by the presence of 926 fractures and 14 joint dislocations. Osteological trauma patterning was compared with historical data collated from the Haslar and Plymouth Hospital musters (1792-1824) and Entry Books of Greenwich Hospital (1749-1765). The most probable aetiology of injuries was explored using insights from modern medical and forensic research, and 18th century sea surgeons’ journals. Falls accounted for a very high proportion of injuries in both datasets, as did crush injuries, and to a much lesser extent, battle trauma. Extremely high rates of nasal fractures, Bennett’s fractures of the first metacarpal, and anterior rib fractures in the skeletal assemblages strongly suggest very high rates of casual interpersonal violence. Interestingly, these injuries were very seldom recorded in either sea surgeon or hospital records, possibly due to seamen’s fear of punishment for transgressing official naval regulations against fighting. Several unusual fractures (such as Shepherd’s fractures of the talus, and third metacarpal avulsion fractures) and bony modifications (such as shallow and unstable hip and shoulder joints, os acromiale and Eagle’s syndrome) appear to be the consequences of engaging in a maritime lifestyle, often beginning in childhood or adolescence.

The introduction of steam propulsion during the early nineteenth century presented the Royal Navy with two interlinked challenges. In the first, steam propulsion had to overcome the sceptics and the challenges of technical development until it proved a reliable and superior alternative to sail. The second was a challenge to the social infrastructure of the Navy which struggled to integrate increasingly large numbers of engine room personnel into a traditional close knit naval hierarchy dominated by seamen. The engineers’ struggle for commissioned status and equality with the executive branch is well documented, as is the history of the engine room artificers’ branch. By comparison, where naval and historical custom has promoted and celebrated the ideal of the Royal Naval ‘bluejacket’ or seaman, its stokers have become subjects of censure while their story has been largely ignored and corrupted by prejudice and myths. Tradition dictates that stokers are portrayed as coarse, uneducated men with a reputation for being trouble makers. As a result, they were judged to have the worst discipline record on the lower-deck. Because of the physical nature of their work and the filth and detritus from the coal they worked with they were also commonly believed to originate from the lowest classes of contemporary society. Yet without stokers no ship could leave harbour let alone engage the enemy. Every item of machinery and equipment onboard a ship relied on the steam produced by stokers. But far from being seen as equals or given any credit for their endeavours in the miniature hell of the stokehole, stokers became social outcasts. No other branch of men in the Navy has been subjected to such longstanding and deep seated censure. The negative stereotypes which surround stokers continue to perpetuate a disservice to a much overlooked and maligned branch of men. In order to determine the reasons why stokers attracted such negative sympathies this thesis will separate the facts from the myths and offer a new perspective on the men condemned by history as ‘the lowest of the low.’

The Great War was an enormous global cataclysm affecting the lives of all inhabitants of the combatant countries and many others. The effects were not uniform, however, and, by assessing the experience of the people of Shetland, this thesis shows how a local history can enhance understanding of the nuances of an international event. The Shetlanders’ experience was similar in many ways to that of other communities, but had aspects that were unusual or even unique. Both local and national sources are used to investigate how the Shetland experience fitted into historiographical discourses on the war. These include: contrasting depictions of the pre-war era as a ‘Golden Age’ or a period of upheaval and conflict; the extent of militarism in pre-war British society; the putative reasons for volunteering for armed service and the controversy about conscription; reactions to the outbreak of war and attitudes towards the enemy and the Government’s handling of the war; the situation of women; and the extent of change and continuity at the re-adaptation to peace. In addition, the thesis explores two related and recurring themes. One of the profound influences on Shetland was its geographical location, which is related here to theories about local and regional history and concepts of ‘islandness’, ‘peripherality’ and ‘place’. Assertions of a Shetland communal consciousness and identity related to a distinctive local experience are also scrutinised. The disparate effects of the war are studied through the experience of different sections of the population. Despite their perceived remoteness, Shetlanders were aware of prewar international antagonisms, especially as their islands became important for Britain’s defence and war strategy and their patriotism came under suspicion. This resulted in recruitment, deployment and casualties for the local armed forces being atypical in the UK. Servicemen’s contemporary writing showed both conformity to prevalent themes and affirmations of local identity. Shetland provided a base for naval operations important to Britain’s victory; relationships between the Navy and Shetlanders were sometimes difficult and visiting servicemen perceived Shetland as remote and different. Examination of the economic consequences of the war and the reactions of Shetland society illustrates how the community’s identity was expressed in the war effort and strengthened, even when national interests were paramount. Finally, commemoration is recognised as both a national movement and an expression of local identity and pride in Shetland’s contribution to victory.

The Royal Navy, and especially its leadership, is perceived to have performed poorly in the First World War and its officers have been described as being automatons who only came alive when directed by superiors. By contrast in the Second World War the Royal Navy and its officers are seen as having ‘done well,’ displaying flair and initiative. There does not appear to have been any attempt to look in any detail at what, if anything, changed in the twenty years between the wars to explain the perceived improvement. This thesis critically examines the executive branch of the Royal Navy, and contends that the navy adapted and modified the training of its officers to meet whatever was required of them; when they were required to passively obey orders as in the Grand Fleet of the First World War, they had been trained for that eventuality, when to show initiative likewise. During the 1920s the officer corps was mismanaged and morale and motivation suffered badly. The influence of the Admiralty civil service, the repository of institutional memory, which managed junior officers’ careers, was conservative and resistant to change. Changes in training both before and after the mutiny at Invergordon (September 1931) brought the officer corps up to date and set it on track for its outstanding performance in the next war, in particular recognising that leadership was not an innate class based ability, but had to be taught and developed. However, the navy had since the latter part of the nineteenth century changed the emphasis of officer’s career paths; specialist training was seen as the ‘route to the top’ and command was downgraded as a necessary part of an officer’s career development. It was only during the latter part of Second World War that having exercised command at sea was recognised as being an important part of an officer’s experience. The thesis also addresses the ‘RNVR myth’ that the Royal Navy was only able to prosecute the Second World War successfully because of an influx of well educated temporary officers and that they were the major driving force. This thesis has been largely based on primary sources, including personnel records which have not been studied before and have been examined in such a way as to allow statistical analysis.

This thesis is concerned with the selection and early career education of executive branch officers in the Royal Navy c1902-1939. The thesis attempts to place naval selection and educational policy in context by demonstrating how it was affected by changing naval requirements, external political interference and contemporary educational reform. It also explores the impact of the First World War and the Invergordon mutiny upon officer education. The thesis discusses the selection of potential executive officers, exploring what methods were used, why they were used and how they were developed over time. It discusses the increasing openness of the officer corps of the Royal Navy to boys of talent, irrespective of their background; and shows that this trend was driven by political demand, fuelled by the increasing number of well educated lower middle class boys, and welcomed by many in the Royal Navy. The thesis demonstrates that the Fisher-Selborne Scheme of officer education combined existing naval practice with recent educational developments to produce a unique and innovatory educational system. It shows how many of the assumptions on which the scheme was founded were subsequently proven to be wrong, and demonstrates its gradual dismantling through the inter-war years. The thesis considers the development of the Special Entry scheme, initially in response to a shortage of junior officers but later as a means of broadening entry to the officer corps. It contrasts the fortunes of the two schemes in the inter-war period, in which the educational side of the Special Entry scheme was largely unaltered. Overall the thesis seeks to place the development of the Royal Navy’s systems for the selection and early career education of executive officers in context by exploring how and why they were developed and their response to the changing fortunes and shape of the Royal Navy.

It was a year of decisions that heralded the pre-dreadnought era, perhaps the least understood chapter of modern naval history. In March 1889, the Salisbury ministry officially endorsed what later became the Naval Defence Act, which in its final form authorised the largest shipbuilding programme of its kind in the nineteenth century. When it was finally completed five years later, the Royal Navy would have a new fleet based around 10 battleships, 42 cruisers and 18 torpedo gunboats, all of the latest design and at a cost of £21,500,000. Then, in December 1889, the Harrison administration sought legislative approval to adopt a forward offensive naval strategy, complete with a fleet of battleships and armoured cruisers in an unprecedented shift in American naval policy. This strategic rationale provided the intellectual framework to transform the United States into a modern seapower. The purpose of this comparative study is to revisit the decisions of 1889, with the benefit of underutilised archival sources and an innovative research methodology recently embraced by the naval historical community. Whereas prior accounts of these decisions generally assess their historical significance in terms of the naval construction that ensued in the pre-dreadnought era, this thesis focuses instead on the pervasive influence of strategic ideas and how strongly they affected the personalities, institutions and events that shaped the respective outcomes in both London and Washington. That strategic ideas shared among naval officers can be decisive in this regard is the underlying tenet behind the cultural approach to historical naval analysis, which is introduced here to highlight the impact of organisational cultures upon the strategic and force structure choices of military organisations.

The history of the Royal Navy during the war with France between 1793 and 1815 is well documented, but the part played by new technologies in maintaining the Royal Navy as an efficient fighting force and contributing to its ultimate success is much less well recognised. This thesis addresses this problem beginning with an examination of the demands made upon Portsmouth Dockyard, the largest of the Royal Dockyards, due to the growth in the size of the fleet. It studies the nature of the tasks carried out in the Dockyard and the ways in which its personnel undertook them. Following a review of emerging new technologies and considering those which were, or were not potentially relevant to the Dockyard's activities, the thesis examines the technological advances actually applied in the period, how they were related to the site, to each other and to the workforce. The main innovations resulted in a major increase in the throughput of the dry docks, due to new dock design and the imaginative use of steam-power. In the metalworking area too, steam-power, together with other new technologies, provided major benefits to the Navy as a whole, especially in the reprocessing of copper. In the woodworking area revolutionary new blockmaking machinery was at the forefront of advances in efficiency and increased output of blocks for the rigging of ships. These advances were primarily due to a small group of men led by Samuel Bentham and Simon Goodrich, who became first "Engineer of the Navy". For their innovative use of new technologies and their management skills, these men can justifiably claim their place in the history of the Navy and of technology. More importantly, the applications of technology in Portsmouth Dockyard made a significant contribution to the industrial revolution in Britain during the period.