NAVAL PROMOTION

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 104, 27 January 1931, Page 2

NAVAL PROMOTION

“Free Gangway” Movement

EXISTING WEAKNESSES A committee, of which Vice-Admiral F. Larken is president, lias been'- appointed by the Admiralty to investigate the subject of promotion in the Navy and is now visiting the different home ports and collecting evidence. What the committee is to do principally is to suggest a scheme under which men who join the Navy as bluejackets may be given opportunities of rising to commissioned rank under a better system than now obtains. For many years past the lower deck have been asking for’ what they term a “free gangway”; that is, the chance of obtaining promotion to commissioned rank under conditions similar to those open to the rank and file of the Army. The latter can obtain a commission from the ranks and rise as high as their abilities will carry them. .Field-Mar-shall Sir William Robertson and other distinguished Army officers joined the service as privates.

In the Navy no such’ a career is possible under existing rules. For war service’ll man may be given a commission to which no limitation as to advancement js attached. In practice ibis means little, as such promotion comes but seldom to men when they are at an ago to benefit fully by it. Captain J. 11. Lyne, now retired, is the only officer who has -risen from sailor to captain in lhe Navy in modern times. In the executive and engineering brandies a few young men get commissions under the "mate scheme” which was introduced by Mr. Winston Churchill. But there is a bar to their progress. None of them can rise liigher Ilian the rank of commander —and few attain thiit. Besides. this limited concession is not open to till brunches of the naval personnel—and there are many. The “mute scheme’’ is generally disliked on the ground that it makes a caste distinction ,between the officers commissioned under it and the rest of the quarter-deck. It is hoped that ns an outcome of the Larken Committee this scheme will be abolished and one for giving scope for promotion without restriction ns to how high an cx-blucjnckct officer may rises substituted for it.