Before the 20th century, the mere idea of a woman officially serving in the Royal Navy would have been laughed at. However, this didn’t stop some women trying. Hannah Snell, for example, successfully impersonated a man and joined the Royal Marines as far back as 1747, where she remained undetected on board naval ships for three years. It is also known that during Nelson’s era a blind eye was often turned to women living on naval vessels as the partners or even wives of some of the crew.

WW1 Wrens
However, the demands of the First World War were to mark a significant change in the Royal Navy’s whole approach to women. During the final two years of the conflict, the Navy was hard-pressed to meet all its commitments, especially manning the warships to take on the threat posed by German U-boats. It was realised that women could be employed to undertake some of the shore-based roles required of the service, thus freeing men to go to sea. Thus the Women’s Royal Naval Service was born in 1917, with Dame Katharine Furse as its first director. The initials WRNS meant that, almost inevitably, these women became known as ‘Wrens’ even within the service itself.

The Royal Navy was rather suspicious of these women and to a certain extent made sure they were regarded as something ‘separate’. Wrens were prohibited from serving on ships, for example, and their slogan became ‘Never at Sea’. The women’s uniforms also had to be very distinctly different to that worn by the men. Female officers sported enormous tricorn hats, and were not even allowed to wear the gold lace used to denote rank in the Royal Navy, and had to make do with blue. The uniform for non-officers, called ‘ratings’, was a large sack-like dress that extended down to the ankles and a pudding basin-style hat with ‘WRNS’ on a ribbon about the centre. It was not flattering attire. Needless to say, since many Wrens undertook practical and potential messy roles, they did not wear a uniform for their day-to-day activities and were issued with whatever protective or working clothing was appropriate to their duties.

The rank structure for officers in WRNS was not the same as the Royal Navy, and was another method used to ensure that it was recognised as different. The women were not permitted to use titles such as captain or lieutenant, but had a hierarchy of ‘directors’ and ‘principals’ instead.

Despite some initial scepticism, the Wrens made a big impact over the 19 months of their existence and embraced a far wider range of duties for the Navy than was originally anticipated. They had been initially envisaged as likely to fulfil a variety of ‘traditional’ women’s roles such as secretaries, waitresses, cleaners and cooks. Yet by the end of the Great War, many wrens were working in naval intelligence, as engineers, electricians, plumbers, and even as despatch riders. It was a popular role for women too – by 1919, when the service was disbanded, there were 7000 Wrens.

WW2 Wrens
The success of the First World War experiment meant that the WRNS was reconstituted almost immediately upon the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. The recruitment slogan was ‘Free a man for the fleet’, and its director was Vera Laughton Matthews. Once again, the roles undertaken by Wrens exceeded all expectations – over 200 different functions have been identified. Women became radio operators, mechanics, boat crews, ordnance experts, fire fighters, meteorologists, technicians and educationalists among many other responsibilities.

It became a very popular and much sought-after role. So much so, that recruitment had to be capped and recruits who wanted to sign up had to join a waiting list for. At its height there were 74,000 women in the WRNS, compared to 170,000 in the air force equivalent (WAAF) and 198,000 women in the army’s Auxiliary Territorial Service. All this meant that the WRNS could be choosey about who it recruited and stringent standards were set for education, physical fitness, and discipline. New recruits were taken for a two-week probation period and any that did not meet the mark were quickly jettisoned. Women who subsequently failed to perform to expectations for any reason were also released from service.

In 1939, the First World War uniform was updated somewhat: the shapeless dress was replaced by knee-length navy skirts and jackets, with a white blouse, black tie, and black stockings. Officers retained their tricorn hats but they were smaller and neater, while ratings initially continued with their pudding bowl-like hats. However, in 1942 women were allowed to start wearing the same sailor’s cap worn by men in the Royal Navy. This was an important symbolic milestone – perhaps the beginning of formal recognition that women, as well as men, could achieve the high professional standards that the Navy demanded. The importance to the service of women’s roles and skills was increasingly clear. The Navy went further, and allowed more Wrens to serve overseas in places such as Egypt, Singapore and South Africa, and a cooler, white version of their uniform was provided for these tropical conditions.

The rank structure for officers was also refined and all of them wore a diamond shape set above their blue cuff stripes to denote rank. The hierarchy varied a little over time, but in 1945 the structure was: commandant, director, superintendent, chief officer, first officer, second officer, third officer.

The WRNS after 1945
The proven value of the WRNS during the Second World War was such that it was not disbanded after the conflict, and in 1949 it was formally established as a permanent service. Princess Anne became Chief Commandant of the WRNS in 1974, a post she held for 19 years. In 1977, the women’s conditions of service were brought into line with the Royal Navy via the Naval Discipline Act, and in 1990 there were experiments with Wrens serving at sea alongside male colleagues. These trials were such a success that in 1993 the WRNS was fully integrated into the Royal Navy and ceased to exist as a separate service.

The remarkable transformation of women’s relationship with the seagoing military over the course of a century is illustrated by the fact that in April 2016, the Royal Navy was listed as one of the ‘Top 50 Employers for Women’ by The Times.