Warrant-officers.

Warrant-officers. The highest ranks to which seamen under ordinary circumstances can attain are those of warrant-officers and chief warrant-officers. They are divided into three classes—gunners, boatswains, and carpenters, the gunners taking precedence of the other two. Of late years their pay and position have been greatly improved, while their sphere of duties has been much enlarged. They now rise from 5s. 6d. per diem, when they first receive their warrant, to 7s. 6d. per diem, and to 9s. on promotion to chief warrant-officer, exclusive of any extra allowances to which they may be entitled for performing special duties. Formerly, before ironclads superseded wooden ships, there was only one officer of this rank of each class carried on board even the largest ships. Now, in addition to the officer of each class appointed to carry out the special duties of gunner, boatswain, and carpenter on board every ship, there are usually three or four junior gunners or boatswains appointed to battle-ships and some of the larger of other classes of ships to perform what are called quarter-deck duties, in addition to which in many of the larger ships an extra gunner or boatswain is appointed for torpedo-duties. A certain proportion of these officers who have duly qualified in navigation are now appointed to command torpedo boats, and in war-time they will unquestionably be largely employed on that service. The warrant-officers of the present day are for their station a most highly educated and most efficient body of men. On the occasion of the Queen's jubilee in 1887 two of this rank were promoted to lieutenants for distinguished service before the enemy during the Egyptian war of 1882-85; and a limited number of the chief warrant-officers who have a specially good record of service are also allowed on retirement to assume that rank. Warrant-officers rank with, but before, midshipmen and with second-lieutenants in the army; chief warrant-officers with, but after, sub-lieutenants in the navy and lieutenants in the army; they can rise to a maximum pension of £150 a year, and their widows are also entitled to a small pension. For Warrant officers in the army, see NON-COMMISSIONED OFFICERS.