Naval Discipline Act

[Keith_history_buff]

I'd like to be proved wrong, but are there any particularly good thread replies on here that give a definitive instruction about the Naval Discipline Act, and the manner in which the clerks recorded the details of a vessel with which a rating was associated with?

[Keith_history_buff]

This was triggered by the following

 

  

14 hours ago, Keith_history_buff said:

The indirect answer to this question is that you need to look into the Naval Discipline Act 1866, which was repealed in 1957 when it was superseded by an Armed Forces Act, I believe. Unfortunately there is no definitive thread on this forum that I am aware of, to talk about this in greater detail.

In essence, every sailor had to be linked to a capital ship. The term in use was "Accounting Base". For small vessels, such as a squadron of destroyers or submarines, it was their depot ship that was the Accounting Base.

Some of the following threads talk about this very subject, which I hope will give a better understanding of the way that the Royal Navy posted men to Accounting Bases, and the implication this has on record keeping.
 

 

 

 

 

 

[Keith_history_buff]

One of the better answers that I have come across

 

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Prior to 01.01.59 the Naval Discipline Act only applied to men on the roll of a ship. Therefore every member of the RN had to be member of a real ship's crew.

Naval bases were named after ships and, indeed, many (not all) started life as real ships which later became training/accommodation hulks etc and the base facility spread over into an adjacent land base.

Every land base had a real ship to which it was attached to ensure the Act applied to all men - sometimes this was only a small vessel such as a tender etc (which would nominally have a huge crew consisting of personnel from the attached base!). Hence the large number of men at Portsmouth who were on the books of HMS Victory. Another example was the naval base at Chatham (named HMS Pembroke) where all personnel were allocated to a real ship called HMS Pembroke for a while - she was a naval trawler!

HMS Actaeon started life as a real ship (formerly named Ariadne pre-06.06.05). It was commissioned as a torpedo school at Sheerness, later becoming a depot ship in 1910. This ship was paid off 31.03.22. Therefore, during WW1, personnel stationed at the base were nominally crew of the ship. The naval flyers at Eastchurch were also on the books of Actaeon 1911-13.

The torpedo boat example above suggests that he was actually crew aboard the smaller ship but was nominally on the roll of the depot ship.

And before anyone asks...I don't know how this was applied to men of the RN Div or to the Royal Marines! The RM may have had the same system applied to them and the RN Div covered by army discipline regulations. I bow to anyone's superior knowledge over that.

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