Pay and conditions

When Samuel Pepys was Secretary of the Navy, he introduced the half-pay scheme. Before this, an officer was merely appointed to a ship, was paid off at the end of the commission, and then ceased to be a naval officer. Pepys’ scheme was that once a man had a commission he remained available for service and was paid half-pay when not otherwise employed.

This meant that at the end of any war when numbers were cut down, there was always a large number of half-pay officers who if lucky might be given another ship, or might serve for long periods without employment. These men would sometimes find other jobs to supplement their half-pay. For example, after the Napoleonic Wars more than three-quarters of naval Lieutenants were unemployed. A number of these men went into the merchant service. There was no retirement as we know it until the middle of the 19th century, although there had been a scheme for superannuating a small number of officers from the late-18th century.