Rule, Britannia*! Britannia rule the waves. This patriotic poem, set to music by Thomas Arne in 1740, and frequently sung today, tells it all. For most of its history Britain's navy did indeed rule the waves of most of the planet's oceans.

As an island nation, Britain was like a castle defended by a wide and often stormy moat, dependant on its ships not only for defense but for trade, exploration and other contacts with the rest of the world.

The first Royal Navy was founded by King Alfred in the ninth century as a defense against the Vikings but was not successful and was not able to prevent the Norman invasion in 1066. Gradually it was rebuilt until reaching great strength under Henry VIII and his daughter Elizabeth I when it defeated the superior forces of the Spanish Armada.

From the beginning of the eighteenth century until the middle of the twentieth, the British Royal Navy was the largest of the world. It was involved in bringing India into the British Empire and fought in the American Revolution and the War of 1812. On October 21, 1805, Admiral Lord Nelson, its greatest hero, died defeating a larger French force at the Battle of Trafalgar. From that point on it dominated the seas. Also during the nineteenth century it fought China during the Opium Wars, tried to enforce the ban on slave trade, patrolled against the pirates and explored all the world. The H.M.S. Beagle, with Darwin aboard, was a navy ship.

All of this was very glorious but what was life like on a ship of the Royal Navy? Nelson's flagship, the H.M.S. Victory is now docked in Portsmouth, England and is open to the public. It is one of the ships Gilbert and Sullivan visited while writing H.M.S. Pinafore to make sure everything they did was accurate. Two websites give virtual tours and a good idea of what life was like.
http://www.hms-victory.com and
http://www.stvincent.ac.uk/Heritage/1797/Victory/index2.html

Life on such a ship was no picnic. Each sailor had a space eighteen inches wide for his hammock, food was hot only when the seas were calm, when rough it was too dangerous to light at fire. The food was largely salted meat and hard, often maggoty bread. (Sailors were advised to eat the bread with their eyes shut so they would not see the maggots.) Fruits and vegetables were rare, leading to scurvy. Later limes were used to provide vitamins giving British sailors the nickname "limeys". There were amenities; for three hundred years each sailor was allowed a daily tot of rum, and women were allowed on board while the ship was in port. The Captain's cabin was comparatively spacious and his food was infinitely better.

When additional crews were needed during times of war press gangs went to work forcibly gathering able bodied men and forcing them into the service, and the prisons were sometimes emptied. (Given a choice between hanging and going into the navy, prisoners often chose to hang). One of the reasons for the War of 1812 was the British practice of stopping American ships and impressing and American sailors who had been born in Britain. With a large proportion of rough, unwilling men in the crew, discipline was strict and harsh. A man could be put in iron shackles on an open deck in all weather for days at a time. Lashing with a cat o'nine tails was also common with the whole crew gathered to watch as a lesson to all. Just a few lashes could open the skin. One hundred could kill a man. The most serious offences led to being hanged at the yardarm and buried at sea.

All in all, life was nothing like that pictured in H.M.S. Pinafore or in Captain Reece.

* For a time it was the practice to insert Hail, Britannia! in the final chorus of Pinafore.

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Revised January 2008
Please credit Lyric Opera San Diego when using this material.