Talk:Admiral (Royal Navy)

Admiral of the Red/Blue
There are a number of redirects to this article such as: Admiral of the Red Admiral of the Blue Vice Admiral of the Blue etc.

None of them are explined in the article and I was intrested in the hisotry of the Ranks/Titles or whatever they are. Does anyone know enough about it to add it to the article or am I better off asking google? Dalf | Talk 02:48, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Um...all of those ranks are already explained in the article. There is in fact a list of the various Admirals and thier colors (or, as the English say..colours...you guys are wierd). -Husnock 03:05, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
 * So it is I got lost in a sea of redirects and articles and ended up comminting here apparently withouth looking at the article properly. I did read several others and thought I was there I guess.  my confusion came from the fact that Vice Admiral of the Blue  and Rear Admiral of the Blue both redirect to Admiral which does not mention them instead of here.  I actually had thought that I was commenting there and did not realise that I had managed to arrive at the right place afterall.  Are those redirects pointing at the right article. Dalf | Talk 06:20, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Badge of Rank
The shoulder badge shown in the article is wrong: three stars designate a Vice-Admiral. For a "full" Admiral, there should be four stars. See: http://www.royal-navy.mod.uk/server/show/conMediaFile.21093 212.152.20.48 (talk • contribs) 19:11, 7 April 2007 (UTC)


 * When did the UK switch to French/US-style stars? I always thought they used the pattern where 1 star = Rear Admiral... 118.90.114.226 (talk) 10:04, 20 March 2008 (UTC)


 * In the (mid?) 1990s. Pdfpdf (talk) 12:27, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

The following is copied from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history:

Admiral's shoulderboards - Commonwealth Navies
Some time in the last 20 years (maybe 5 or 10), the Australian and British Navies changed the shoulder boards of Rear Admiral, Vice Admiral and Admiral from containing 1, 2 and 3 stars to containing 2, 3 and 4 stars. (Refer http://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/server/show/ConWebDoc.6020/changeNav/3533 and http://www.navy.gov.au/general/ranks.html) Can anyone tell me when this happened? If you can point me to some references, that would be useful too. Thanks in advance, Pdfpdf (talk) 12:34, 15 March 2008 (UTC)


 * If you badly want to know, you can send an email to Gieves and Hawkes, the naval officers' tailors in Savile Row, London. (They made Nelson's uniforms and still provide them for the royal family.) They will know and be able to tell you which warrant, if any, is applicable. -- R OGER D AVIES  talk 08:03, 16 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I think it was when Commodore was made a substantive rank, some time in the late 90s I think? Commodore is the One star rank, hence altering the boards.
 * ALR (talk) 12:26, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Probably as a way to give a "British" explanation for changing to a non-British (actually Rest of Europe) system :D. 118.90.83.6 (talk) 06:23, 1 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I always thought the One Star = Rear Admiral was the Rest of Europe (German Navy before WWI etc) and that France was the odd one out... 118.90.20.3 (talk) 06:57, 9 October 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry (for myself) to sound thick, but what's your point? Pdfpdf (talk) 14:50, 9 October 2009 (UTC)


 * No, it was more of a throwaway comment, hence the dots at the end. 118.90.67.20 (talk) 01:56, 10 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Ah huh. I now understand. (Thanks.) Pdfpdf (talk) 05:33, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Citation Chill Pill Needed
I can certainly see and respect the need for citations in instances actually in accordance with the policy - statements that are "dubious or sufficiently controversial" ...but come on. In the case of this short article, I find myself a bit surprised by the end of it that the rogue editor hasn't demanded independent proof of the very existence of this alleged "Royal Navy", or the so-called "ocean" they supposedly plied. As only the most egregious example... Isn't the rank of Nelson at death pretty well a matter of common knowledge and/or at least public record? 208.54.14.114 (talk) 02:58, 19 December 2007 (UTC)Honor
 * The rank of Nelson at death would speak against his being mentioned at all in the article, although yeah it should be cited. If it's a matter of common knowledge, it should be simple enough to source.


 * More to the point, this topic seems to attract a lot of mistakes. There are, e.g., any number of people who "know" Nelson was an admiral when he wasn't and there are 4-star US officers going off at the mouth about the term's derivation from the Fatimid commander of the sea when it turns out that etymology was as false as the older ones trying to derive it from Old English or an Arab/Greek combo meaning "commander of the salty waters". — Llywelyn II   12:47, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Promoting Unsuccessful Captains
I find this sentence odd:
 * Another way was to promote unsuccessful captains to the rank of admiral without distinction of squadron (a practice known as yellowing — the Captain so raised became known as a yellow admiral).

This sounds more like a way to give a successful captain a promotion when no slot was available, but the word "unsuccessful" has survived several close by edits. Am I missing something? Ferritecore (talk) 22:43, 10 September 2008 (UTC)


 * The wording is correct, though maybe could be more clearly expressed. As promotion to flag rank was by seniority rather than ability, if there were a number of captains, some unsuccessful and some successful, there was no way to promote only the successful to the next rung on the ladder, the unsuccessful above them in seniority would also have to rise. So to get Captain C to rear-admiral, captains A and B would also have to be promoted. If the Admiralty were not keen on waiting for their man to reach the requisite slot in the queue they could promote the unsuccessful and undistinguished Captains A and B, but they were not given any commands and were immediately retired, to live ashore on half pay. Captain C on the other hand would then be promoted in turn and receive a command, and the former Captains A and B would now be the 'Yellow Admirals'. So the other way to rise was to have someone below you in seniority but who exceeded you in ability. You could then rise by default if the Admiralty made promotions to get the man they wanted, and as a side-effect bumped the undistinguished ones in between to flag rank. Benea (talk) 11:44, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was moved to Admiral (Royal Navy) – Juliancolton  &#124; Talk 01:16, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Admiral (United Kingdom) → Admiral (Royal Navy) &mdash; Rank pre-dates the creation of the UK, not the creation of the RN. Also change would bring consistency with Admiral of the Fleet (Royal Navy), Commodore (Royal Navy), Captain (Royal Navy), etc Greenshed (talk) 21:26, 19 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Support — Consistency, and it being more accurate, seem to be supported by WP:DAB — V = I * R  (talk to Ω) 21:50, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Support per nom. Well-reasoned proposal. Jafeluv (talk) 09:54, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Unemployed?
Currently the text states: As there were invariably more admirals in service than there were postings, many admirals remained unemployed, especially in peacetime.

Please expand. Were they full, partially or not paid? Were they posted to locations where they may have been needed in an emergency but still not assigned a duty? Were they considered retired but liable to be called to service? Any other oddities? WikiParker (talk) 13:29, 11 November 2014 (UTC)
 * If an Admiral (or any other officer) on the Active List wasn't employed then they went on half-pay, where they languished until they were employed or until they were placed on the Retired List for non-service; then they received retired pay. Here's the Order in Council showing the regulations for non-service in place from 1914. &mdash;Simon Harley (Talk | Library). 14:51, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Yellow admirals
I find the last section of Promotion path of flag officers from 1702 to 1864 misleading. How could yellow admirals be "often assigned to shore-based administrative roles" if they were "promoted to flag rank on the understanding that they would immediately retire on half-pay"? The two statements do not work together. If an admiral were employed in any naval capacity then they would be by definition on full and not half-pay.

Indeed, in my reading I have found no examples of a superannuated rear admiral/yellow admiral being employed within the navy after the promotion had been made. The exceptions to this are those few officers who were reinstated on the active list later on, such as Sir Robert Barlow. I would suggest the creation of a separate article for the rank/position of yellow admiral, as there is for the like of rear admiral of the blue, that could go into more detail on the requirements in becoming a yellow admiral and the changes made to the rank over time (the "main article" linked to the section doesn't discuss the topic at all despite being labelled as such).

I get ahead of myself however; my main gripe here is with the confusing nature of the (very small) section on yellow admirals, but this being a more 'popular' article than those I usually work on I'm querying the subject here first. Thanks, Pickersgill-Cunliffe (talk) 22:14, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

I would also note that superannuated rear admirals/yellow admirals were always noted as being rear admirals and not any other variant, and thus question why this section isn't in Rear admiral (Royal Navy) instead. Pickersgill-Cunliffe (talk) 22:27, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Sources for future article expansion
This lengthy treatment is old and wrong on any number of historical details (amir al-bahr, dates and titles of the 13th-century admirals, England having admirals before France, &c.) but could possibly be used to source some common mistakes and some points about the 18th and 19th century navy and the way people viewed it at the time. — Llywelyn II   12:50, 28 April 2024 (UTC)