Hearts of Oak are our Women
In the early 1990s, at the end of a long campaign for gender equality, all positions on Royal Navy ships were finally opened to women. Two hundred years earlier, during the age of sail, the official position was firmly to exclude women from warships at sea during time of war. Wives were permitted onboard when the ship was in port (with the definition of a ‘wife’ being routinely stretched to include large numbers of prostitutes) but all of these women were expected to be put a
