Britannia rules: The early years of modern Royal Naval officer training

The establishment of formal officer training in the Royal Navy has received little detailed attention and has largely been attributed to the foresight of the personalities involved. In this paper, Dr. Dickinson suggests that the commissioning of a dedicated harbor training ship was in fact the logical extension of a series of bureaucratic measures attempting to improve the quality and retention rate of young officers. Additionally, he argues that the Britannia system, while primarily introduced to combat fluctuation in manning levels, also represented a recognition by a properly-concerned Admiralty that cadets should be trained in a specialized environment.