UK Navy appoints first woman admiral

It's taken 120 years of women being in naval services. But on 26 May the Royal Navy finally appointed its first female admiral. 

Commodore Jude Terry, OBE, (47) will become a rear admiral next year and the highest-ranking woman in the Navy. 

Women have, of course, worked with the Navy informally and formally for centuries, including in uniform as members of the QARNNS, WRNS, and VAD. They were also in many roles such as nursing aides afloat and wives who funded their office husband's career. 

But until 1991, seven years before Jude joined, women were not allowed to serve at sea. This meant that, however able, they could not attain senior positions. 

The decision to appoint Jude Terry follows the  controversial culling of 'excess' admirals in 2019 (when there were 34 male admirals), as well as decades of equal opportunities efforts. She stands on the shoulders of giants. I know about those shoulders: I've been tracing the pioneers' progress.

Her current role is Deputy Director People Delivery Royal Navy, and next summer she will be fully the Director.This task involves handling 33,520 Regulars. 

Of these, about a tenth are women. Since 1960 the Navy's usual number of women has been just over 3,000. 

The goal is now that women will be 20 per cent of the Navy by 2030. Observers suspect that this improved ratio may be achieved by further cutbacks in male numbers.

PIONEERING FORBEARS

Commodore Terry's most pioneering UK predecessor was Katharine Furse, the first director of the new Women's Royal Naval Service in 1917 (pictured right). 

Dame Katharine wrote in her autobiography that when she showed off her new uniform at the Admiralty: 

'The First Lord ... pointed to one of my new buttons and said. "those are Admiral's Buttons, why has she got them?" The Second Sea Lord explained that the Director [WRNS] had equivalent rank for certain purposes and therefore ought to wear the buttons... they were approved.' 

Women were civilians in very separate naval services. Some naval men had trouble seeing their value and respecting their authority.

Initially women were permitted to wear dashing tricorne hats. But when it came to insignia they were only allowed blue braid, not gold, because gold was 'definitely the prerogative of the men' and would be 'wasted' on women. 

Today such discrimination would be unthinkable. Jude Terry will be working in a changing culture. 

Making women leave on marriage, or when pregnant, is a thing of the  past. Earlier than the 1990s Wrens and QARNNS became activists and took the MOD to court for discriminatory behaviour. 

Women also fought for the right NOT to go to sea: see CPO Jacqueline Cartner' s 2012 struggle (pictured, left). More recently women pressed for combatant statues. 

The Naval Servicewomen's Network, which Captain Ellie Ablett (pictured right, in uniform) founded in 2013 helped women work collectively for a fairer deal, including access non-traditional roles. 

At that time no-one would bet on when a woman would finally become an admiral.

FINDING OUT MORE 

~ If you want to know about Commodore Terry the best place to start is a Youtube interview with her made by students at Barnhill Community High School in 2020. They interviewed her for 20 minutes and she was frank. See Captain Terry Interview https://youtu.be/XSspBCcT0cI. 

In it she said she had 'always been a tomboy' and was 'fiery.'  (However, she married in 2009. See picture of her wedding to a Merchant Navy pilot, Captain Noel Charlton. He's on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/noel-charlton-55982556/?originalSubdomain=uk).

She spoke of her father being in the RN, and her mother's initial opposition to Jude joining. 

Asked about role models Jude named three men: Nelson Mandela; a really good RN commanding officer Richard (inaudible); plus the inspirational General David Hancock. 

~You may also like to look at social media. Jude Terry tweets at https://twitter.com/judeterry9. 

~ On LinkedIn she can be found at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jude-terry-29723a53 

~ And for the fullest details, free of pay walls, see the article below. I have lifted from the website of the Association of Wrens and Women of the Royal Naval Services:https://wrens.org.uk/2021/05/26/royal-navy-appoints-first-female-admiral/.

"For the first time in the centuries-long history of the Royal Navy, a woman officer will be appointed to the rank of admiral. 

"Commodore Jude Terry, who has served her nation and Navy for nearly a quarter of a century, has been selected for promotion to rear admiral – making her the most senior woman in the Royal Navy, past or present. 

"She will be responsible for sailors and Royal Marines from the moment they are recruited to their final day in Service – spanning their entire careers by overseeing training, welfare and career management. 

MAKING HISTORY 

"The 47-year-old from Jersey will be promoted to rear admiral next year and take over as the Royal Navy’s Director of People and Training and Naval Secretary. Of making history she says simply “someone has to be first”. 

"She continued: “I have always thought of myself as a naval officer first, then a logistics officer, then Jude and finally as a female. The Navy genuinely doesn’t look at your gender and is an equal opportunities employer – it wants you to be part of a team and deliver outputs to support operations. 

"“I have been really lucky throughout my career. I’ve enjoyed great jobs, wonderful support from my family, worked with great people, seized the opportunity to see the world and contribute to a number of operations which have made a difference to people’s lives including Afghanistan, Somalia and Sierra Leone to name a few.”

"She currently serves as deputy director of the department she is earmarked to take over, with the goal of helping to shape the Royal Navy and its people up to 2040.

"First Sea Lord Admiral Tony Radakin [pic left] said: “I am delighted with Commodore Jude Terry’s selection for promotion to Rear Admiral. Jude is part of a cohort of trailblazers in the Royal Navy who have seized the opportunities on offer, and risen to the top. 

"This builds on a rich career of naval and broader Defence appointments, all of which she has excelled at.”

"Commodore Terry hails from a naval family and joined the Navy in 1997. 

"She has spent the bulk of her seagoing career in Plymouth-based warships, including survey vessel HMS Scott and two spells with helicopter carrier HMS Ocean.

HMS OCEAN 

"Of her 12-month second draft to HMS Ocean she spent ten away from the UK in the Baltic and Gulf and was responsible for working with a documentary team producing the series Warship for Channel 4. 

"Her career has taken her to the Gulf and Middle East, Indian Ocean, Far East and the Caribbean. 

"Numerous staff appointments have included the Royal Navy’s logistics branch manager, dealing with issues as varied as recruiting and training, retaining experienced personnel, ensuring ships and submarines have enough chefs, review of tattoo policy, and a review of welfare provision across the service. 

"And Commodore Terry was awarded the OBE in the New Year’s Honours List in 2017 for her efforts during three years at the UK military’s operational hub, Permanent Joint Headquarters, during which she was involved in: 

# the end of Britain’s front-line operations in Afghanistan

#  overseeing the closure of bases at Lashkar Gar, Bastion and Kandahar 

# the successful efforts to curb the spread of the Ebola virus in West Africa in 2014 – 2015. 

HOME IN JERSEY 

"Away from the Royal Navy, Commodore Terry still lives in Jersey, enjoys its shoreline, outdoor activities and water sports ... as well as travelling, reading, good food and good weather."

Nursing in the Navy: Nora Miller: passenger ship nurse and QARNNS pioneer.

Nora Miller, later Lewis, (born 1940) (pictured above in Malta when she was a QARNNS) is one of the rare women who nursed in both UK navies, Merchant and Royal. She is part of a remarkable cluster of women who did an archetypal feminine job but at officer-level, and in a workforce where men dominated. Such women numbered hundreds not thousands.
Her memoir, Nurse in the Navy, was published in 2016. It is all too brief: just 136 pages. But two of its key elements are her experience on the prestigious liner/cruiseship Queen Elizabeth from 1966-68, and in the Royal Navy from 1970- 1981.

Looking after cruisers and crew: 1966-68
In commercial shipping women had nursed on passenger ships since before 1900. For the first few decades of the twentieth century they were often employed as stewardesses but expected to nurse when needed, on top of their regular work. When Nora Miller, a former head-girl, joined the iconic Queen Elizabeth in 1966 she joined a world where the two or three Sisters were a respected full-time part of the medical team. (See picture of QE team above: Nora is far right)
‘I settled into a pleasant routine of crossing the Atlantic in winter followed by a cruise, either to the Caribbean from New York or to the Mediterranean from Southampton.’ In summer her ships simply crossed between New York and Southampton.
‘After two years this wonderful adventure came to an end for me.’ Cunard replaced the ship with the QEII in 1968. Jobs were lost. ‘It was last in, first out’ and she went ‘drearily back to life ashore. In the long term it was a good thing as for me it was not a life with any real substance.’ She left ‘far more worldly wise then when I joined.’
Many seafarers eventually become tired of living out of a suitcase, but still addicted to travel. For Nora "I loved the idea of a regular change of job and realise that if I joined the Royal Navy they would do it for me with regular postings, some abroad.’ She became a Queen Alexandra’s Royal Naval Nursing Service Sister in 1970.

Navy and QARNNS: 1970-81
By contrast to nurses on passenger ships, women had nursed intermittently in Royal Navy hospital ships near combat situations since at least 1660. They became a separate professional force in 1884, which was in 1902 named Queen Alexandra’s Royal Naval Nursing Service.
They worked on hospital ships in the First and Second World War and in Korea. However QARNNS’ usual place was in naval hospitals ashore.
Many QARNNS longed to be based with the Navy overseas. Nora too had looked ‘forward to foreign postings and was dismayed to see the Navy withdraw from Hong Kong, Singapore and Mauritius the very year I joined.’
In fact, she was lucky. In 1971 she was posted to Malta, one of the few remaining overseas naval bases in this Cold War. She afterwards went to the US on an exchange scheme. Then in 1979 Nora had ‘another ground-breaking posting abroad’ at RAF hospital Wegberg near Düsseldorf where she taught obstetrics to Royal Navy student nurses. (See picture above, Nora is on right).

Changing times: 1970-90
Naval nurses were not allowed to serve at sea in this period (male sick berth assistants did that work). But in 1971 when she was allowed on board HMS Glamorgan for a family day Nora told an officer she met that ‘"It won’t be long before we women are at sea with you"… To my astonishment he replied angrily, "You can stop talking like that! It's very unlucky to have women at sea!"
In fact, it took another two decades before women in naval service were allowed to routinely serve at sea, just like males. Exceptionally, ‘in the 1970s [naval] nurses were quickly put on board ship if it was sailing off to evacuate British families from some danger zone, as happened several times’, she explained.
When she returned to Portsmouth in 1973 ‘Sexist attitudes in hospital were being challenged at last… One of the Ear Nose and Throat doctors… told me to fetch him a cup of coffee. "Get your own coffee," I replied. He looked startled. "But nurses are the handmaids of the doctors!" he said and was only half joking. "Not on my ward, they’re not!" I told him firmly. "And don't you go asking any of my staff to do it either.’

The two key changes that affected naval nursing were:
~ 1977. The decision to include women under the Naval Discipline Act, just as men were. Nora Miller told me ‘It changed everything.’ QARNNS became properly affiliated to the Royal Navy, although remaining a separate service. They wore a more naval uniform with gold braid on their sleeves. Nora found that when the QARNNS came back from their post-NDA course some male medical assistants were quite hostile because the women now had a more naval status. They got used to it.’
~ 1990. NDA was followed by the 1990 decision that women could serve at sea on naval ships. By that time Nora had left the QARNNS to be with her husband.
In both Merchant and Royal Navies, a few women were also serving as doctors from the 1960s.

After 1983 males were allowed to be QARNNS. Today mixed health-care teams serve on all ships. Men still predominate in the higher medical jobs.

~ Nursing in the Navy can be bought via http://www.carolinebrannigan.com/memoirs-by-caroline-brannigan.php.
~ Naval nursing history is outlined in my forthcoming book Women and the Royal Navy (IB Tauris/NMRN).
~ Passenger ship nurses’ history is in my From Cabin “Boys” to Captain: 250 years of Women at Sea (History Press, 2016).

Celebrating Wrens' centenary year

Champagne time! November 2017 marks the start of the Women's Royal Naval Service in 1917.

I myself am writing a history of not just the WRNS but also naval nurses: QARNNS and Voluntary Aid Detachments, and Reservists, as well as women and girls in the Sea Rangers and Girls' Nautical Training Corps.
It's called Women and the Royal Navy (IB Tauris/National Museum of the Royal Navy).

My book will be coming out at some point in this year. It looks at the Navy's history of working with women, from women's perspective. It covers the past 600 years to today.

One of the VADs who has been helping me by telling her story, Norah Hanson, kindly loaned this picture which shows the variety of women in naval life in World War II.

Picture shows women working together despite being in different parts of naval services: HMS Cabbala signal school sick bay personnel, 1943: Lto R on back row: the Wren steward who cleaned the ward; two Red Cross VADs; the RNVR medical officer; a St John's VAD, Norma Wilson(a Red Cross VAD), and Wren writer who did the sick berth’s clerical work.
Front row: St John's VAD and QARNNS Sister (almost certainly a Reserve).


EXHIBITIONS
February 18 will see the exhibition at the National Museum of the Royal Navy: ‘Pioneers to Professionals: Women and the Royal Navy’, http://www.nmrn.org.uk/news-events/nmrn-blog/special-exhibition-shares-lost-stories-celebrate-women-royal-navy. From now on there will be frequent blog items with exciting photographs. One of the main images they are using for the exhibition is also the one we will be using for the cover of my book. Other smaller exhibitions and on-line exhibits are expected too.

PICTURE: Off to Arromanches. Wrens set off for France on HMS St Helier just after D-day, 15 August 1944. From the album of Elizabeth Ashton, NMRN

.


ACTION
The Association of Wrens and WRNS 100 are organising many celebratory activities which can be found on this website:
~ www.wrens.org.uk/sites/default/files/attachments/wrns100_events.pdf

READING
At least two books are coming out as well as mine.They include:

~ Autumn: Hannah Roberts'academic book focused on wars: A History of the WRNS in Two World Wars (IB Tauris). https://sites.google.com/site/hannahrobertshistorian/

WW2 un/welcomes to servicewomen on warships

(Wrens were seen as suitable for serving grog ashore, not for drinking it at sea along with shipmates.)

Most people think women were never, ever, on warships in WW2. But I’ve just been to Portsmouth’s National Museum of the Royal Navy to give a very illustrated talk: ‘Grog, darning and gendered un/welcomes; Wrens and QARNNS nurses on WW2 warships.’ (Jan 8)
The point was to discuss the women who were exceptionally given passage on Royal Navy vessels in WW2, as semi-members of the crew. They were either Wrens being evacuated when overseas, or naval nurses (QARNNS) assisting homeward-bound British POWs as the war ended. Their warship was the first available ship that could take them.
For example, Jane Eldridge (below)was on HMS Renown because she was cyphering for Churchill, going to and from the crucial Tehran conference on this fast ship. He needed cypherers and coders with him.
(with thanks to the Association of Wrens: http://www.wrens.org.uk/gallery/?start=54)

WELCOMES VARIED
Welcomes for these ‘lady intruders’ varied, depending on the time in the war, the seas, and the women’s roles and attitudes. They got in trouble if they asked for grog or got in the way of battle. But they were welcomed if they darned and kept to women’s traditional place.
A large portion of my talk was built around a fascinating 2004 mini-memoir by Mary Sturt (later Pratt) (Recollections of a War-time Wren, part 2,http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/67/a3436067.shtml)


TALKS' BENEFITS
Giving talks is a wonderful activity because of all the expertise you are offered by an audience afterwards. This evening was particularly useful because so many men there had been or were in the Royal Navy. They were able to say how the situation looked from their perspective.
Several sent me follow-up multi-page emails full of background information and advice about where to look for more evidence. The topic could well make an article.
Certainly the new knowledge I’ve gained will feed into the book I’ll be writing for 2017, on the history of women in the Royal Naval service (IB Tauris).
Thank you, everyone, including Radio Solent (Jan 8, the Julian Clegg show) and the Portsmouth News (Jan 13), who interviewed me and gave it publicity.

The lost history of Wrens and QARNNS on battleships in WW2: news of event in Jan 2014

A uniformed service woman on a wartime battleship? Surely it's a seeming contradiction that can't be countenanced, like, for example, Prince William marrying a North Korean barber.

But ... it happened. Royal Navy vessels in WW2 exceptionally carried women as semi-members of the crew. They were either Wrens being evacuated or going out to overseas postings, or naval nurses(QARNNS assisting homeward-bound British Prisoners of Wars as the conflict ended.

WELCOME TO A TALK
On Wednesday January 8 I'm giving a highly illustrated talk on the subject at the National Museum of the Royal Navy in Portsmouth. "Grog, darning and gendered un/welcomes; Wrens and QARNNS nurses on WW2 warships" takes place at 5o'clock and is free. (http://www.nmrn.org.uk/sites/default/files/Research%20Programme%20leaflet%202013-2014.pdf)

In it I'll be looking at the way these women were seen as intruders and anomalies that had to be accommodated into closed and traditional masculine institutions. They were "matter out of place", to use an anthropological concept.

WRENS
Great tension caused by some Wrens who were seen as transgressing gendered boundaries by expecting that if they worked as men did they should also get men’s rewards, including grog. Wrens on warships were positioned as boys (at best) or troublemakers and spoilers to be got rid of (at worst.
But on some more progressive ships officers were proud to flaunt Wrens on deck as they sailed in a celebratory way into the world’s harbours.

QUARNNS
The only accounts of QARNNS on ships show that they were welcomed, and even made honorary members of ship’s companies, because they were not challenging. They sewed for the men and did not expect to be treated as full participants.
In other words, they behaved as lady visitors traditionally did: appreciatively and supportively. The outcome was sometimes marriage.

SO WHAT DOES IT SAY ABOUT GENDERED ATTITUDES?
With what degrees of welcome and dismay were women, as matter out of place and feminised representatives of civilian and domestic life, handled by their hosts?
What place could women negotiate in total institutions geared to war, the support of the status quo, and the avoidance of ‘weak’ emotions?
And what do these cases reveal about women’s and men’s attitudes towards something approximating gender equality?
--
Using concepts such as ‘matter out of place’ (Douglas) and ‘hosts and guests’ in ‘total institutions’ (Goffman) this accessible but scholarly talk explores three recorded cases as examples of possible underlying trends in attitudes towards gender on British warships in WW2.
Why do it? Because during my research into women at sea in both world wars, for a book to be published by Yale University Press next year, I stumbled over these women and found their experience fascinating and telling.
I want to share it with you and anyone who's interested.
Hopefully it will be helpful in understanding naval men's attitudes towards women fifty years later when females were allowed to serve on some warships, as Smiles' cartoon shows (May 2000, Navy News).
The caption reads "The last [HMS] Dauntless had an all-female crew - why not the next?" So far, of course, there has been no all-female warship, although there were many all-male ones.