pursers Archive

A Brief Guide to Men and Officers in Aubrey’s Royal Navy

Current scholarship (thanks in part to the title of N. A. M. Rodger’s influential book) often refers to the ships of Aubrey’s Royal Navy as “the wooden world”. This is a highly accurate description of a complicated self-contained society with strict rules of conduct and hierarchy. Entire articles can be and have been written about [...]
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Diet and Food Quality in Aubrey’s Royal Navy

“Englishmen, and more especially seamen, love their bellies above anything else, and therefore it must always be remembered in the management of the victualling of the navy that to make any abatement in the quantity or agreeableness of the victuals is to discourage and provoke them in the tenderest point, and will sooner render them [...]
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An Introduction to Pay and Prize Money in Aubrey’s Royal Navy

“The pay is contemptible for a learned man – five pounds a month – and I am ashamed to mention it; but there is the chance of prize-money… For even Aristotle would have been moved by prize-money. Doubloons, sir: they lie in soft leather sacks, you know, about so big, and they are wonderfully heavy [...]
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