THE MIDSHIPMAN

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 29, 4 February 1939, Page 27

THE MIDSHIPMAN

The youths described in ,"Young Gentlemen," by Lieutenant-Comman-der C. F. Walker, are the embryo officers- of his Majesty's Navy—"volunteers," cadets,. midshipmen, or Master's Mates as they have been variously styled at different times. The author feels that they have rarely had justice done to them by the literary profession. Historians have neglected them, novelists and playwrights, pretending to portray, have in fact -caricatured them, whereby, the general reader is given to understand that a; midshipman is either, according to the mood of the writer, a namby-pamby cherub in blue coat and brass buttons, or a drunken, bullying, libertine. Actually, of course, they differ very little from their contemporaries in other walks of life, even less today than in the earlier part of Mr. Walker's period. Up to the early years of the presentcentury it was the practice of the Navy to breed its officers by adherence to the maxim, "Catch 'em young and send 'em to , sea" —for reasons that were ably summarised, in his time, by Dr. Johnson. That practice resulted in the Young Gentlemen of the Navy having real responsibility thrown on them at an early age, whereby they did in fact acquire a greater measure of initiative and. self-reliance than their brothers who remained at school. But apart from that practice, the Navy has never been consistent for very long in its methods of entering and training its future admirals; and even the, early introduction to sea life has now been abandoned—for good and. sufficient reasons—and the young naval officer of today enters on his seagoing career at school-leaving age, as do his fellows in many other professions.

Lieutenant-Commander Walker relates all the changes in the conditions of midshipmen's service tbhroughqut two centuries in an entertaining manner.