Abstract
By tracing all officers’ careers from the time they joined the navy through their commissioning and beyond, this book has illustrated the experience of ordinary lieutenants across Europe. There were two models for how to educate future lieutenants: the French model of shore-based academies and the British model of sending teenagers to sea. Ultimately, though, it is the similarities that are most striking. Social backgrounds, promotion prospects, and seagoing responsibilities were common to most officers. They moved within a transnational community, following the demand for naval expertise wherever it led them.
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Notes
- 1.
The British model could just as easily be called the Dutch model. The different models did not necessarily reflect officers’ allegiances or interests: the Danish navy was significantly influenced by the French, but as Chap. 7 showed, Danish officers were much more likely to seek service abroad in the British navy.
- 2.
On the Ottoman navy, see Stanford J. Shaw, ‘Selim III and the Ottoman Navy’, Turcica 1 (1969): 212–41; on the American navy, see Christopher McKee, A Gentlemanly and Honorable Profession: The Creation of the U.S. Naval Officer Corps, 1794–1815 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1991).
- 3.
The definition of a profession comes from Penelope Corfield, Power and the Professions in Britain, 1700–1850 (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), 25.
- 4.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. ‘Greig, Sir Samuel (1735–1788)’.
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Wilson, E. (2019). Conclusion. In: Wilson, E., Hammar, A., Seerup, J. (eds) Eighteenth-Century Naval Officers. War, Culture and Society, 1750 –1850. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25700-2_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25700-2_9
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