Reply To: Irish and Welsh speakers in RN ships

[J.D. Davies]

Have only just come across this posting, but I beg to differ. When researching my book Britannia’s Dragon: A Naval History of Wales, I found plenty of evidence of Welshmen using their own language aboard ship in the 18th and 19th centuries – and that included officers, too. Several examples are quoted in the book. I think the critical thing is that as long as men had sufficient grasp of English to be able to follow commands and understand technical terms, there was relatively little concern about the language they used when off duty.