Despatch riders worked in all weathers, delivering messages and parcels to ships and naval establishments and were responsible for the maintenance of their motorbikes.
The National Museum of the Royal Navy

Following a recent government announcement, women can soon join any branch of the Royal Navy providing they have the necessary skills. This is a marked contrast to 100 years ago when the Women’s Royal Naval Service motto was ‘Never at Sea’. Yet women were actively working on board serving ships and supporting naval operations long before this.

A new exhibition, to open on 18 February at The National Museum of the Royal Navy, Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, reveals the remarkable stories of naval women. Opening in the centenary year of the formation of the Women’s Royal Naval Service, the exhibition ‘Pioneers to Professionals’ will celebrate women’s contribution to the naval services for the last 250 years.

The exhibition will feature objects that illustrate the stories of early pioneers who disguised themselves as men or accompanied their husbands to sea on 17th century warships, to the first professionals in the Naval Nursing Service and WRNS up until women who serve in the naval forces today.

The work of these pioneering women, and many others, led to the integration of the WRNS into the Royal Navy in 1993. Today females in the Royal Navy and Royal Marines make up 9.3% of the force in the UK Regular Forces and Future Reserves. Furthermore, the percentage of officers who are female in the Royal Navy and Royal Marines, in the UK Regular Forces, stands at 10.6%.

The exhibition at The National Museum of the Royal Navy comes at a time when equal rights for women in the armed forces will see a significant change. Recent government announcements have lifted restrictions on women serving in ground close combat roles, removing the last remaining barriers.

The relevance of the exhibition opening in 2017 is therefore considerable; whilst the centenary marks women’s past achievements in the Royal Navy we still see significant changes happening today towards achieving gender equality in the armed forces.

Coinciding with the centenary, historian Jo Stanley will be releasing a new book ‘A History of the Royal Navy: Women and the Royal Navy’ this year, the first accessible gendered analysis of Wrens and their successors.

Furthermore, the official opening on 8 March 2017 will take place on the same day as International Women’s Day, a day that celebrates the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women.

Women’s contribution to the Royal Navy has in the past been overlooked. It is commonly perceived that until the introduction of the uniformed women’s services the navy was an exclusively male domain however women were living on warships into the early nineteenth century. The exhibition will display objects such as the logbook of HMS Queen Charlotte which records William Brown being dismissed for being female proving women’s existence on ships.

Women such as Hannah Snell who served for four and a half years in the Royal Marines as a man named ‘James Gray’ highlight how women were perfectly capable of carrying out manual seafaring tasks. She dressed in men’s clothes and managed to hide her true identity, even when she was badly wounded during the siege of Pondicherry in 1748. In 1750 Snell revealed her true gender and became a celebrity, appearing on the London stage dressed in her uniform. Unusually, her military career was officially recognised and she was granted a pension by the Royal Chelsea Hospital.  A print of Hannah Snell will feature in the exhibition.

The formation of the Women’s Royal Naval Service in 1917 was an important milestone for the history of women and the Royal Navy. The service allowed women to work in an official capacity in shore-based roles thus releasing men to work on the ships. The exhibition will include artefacts and photographs from the early years of the WRNS including a ceramic model of a Wren that sat on the desk of Katharine Furse, the first Director of the WRNS.

Pioneers to Professionals will display not only women’s roles in an official capacity but also their leisure activities, concerns of equal opportunities and pregnancy as well as the growing equality and women’s role in service today. Women today play an active role in a wide variety of naval operations, many of whom have risen through the ranks to senior positions and in some cases receiving gallantry awards for their actions. A photograph of Kate Nesbitt will feature in the exhibition, Nesbitt was the first female member of the Royal Navy to be awarded the Military Cross as a result of her actions in Afghanistan in March 2009.

Curator Victoria Ingles said “Historically the work of naval women was rarely recorded and often overlooked, yet thousands have actively contributed to worldwide naval operations over centuries. During this time, women have undertaken a huge range of jobs and have often confounded expectations about what they could do and this exhibition seeks to bring some of these inspirational stories to attention. We are also keen to highlight the everyday experience of naval women past and present and are encouraging visitors to contribute their own stories helping us to fully reflect the scale and significance of women’s work within the navy.”