WRNS - One Hundred Years On

Gillian Thornton tours an exhibition celebrating Naval women and their contribution over the years.

ONE hundred years ago, in the dark days of World War I, an organisation was born that offered exciting new challenges to women. For a generation used to domestic duties on the home front, the formation of the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS) provided an unprecedented opportunity to develop new skills and embrace broader horizons.

This year the centenary of its formation is celebrated in an exhibition at the National Museum of the Royal Navy (NMRN) in Portsmouth’s Historic Dockyard. Officially opened by HRH The Princess Royal, Patron of both the NMRN and the Women’s Royal Naval Service Centenary, it runs until early 2018.

The WRNS was created in 1917 to fill a temporary manpower shortage created by war. Not that those early WRNS ever set sail. Their roles were strictly shore based, thus releasing men to work on ships.

First Director was Katharine Furse, who had previously been Commandant-in-Chief of the Voluntary Aid Detachments, and had huge expertise in running a large organisation.

“In October 1919, the WRNS were officially disbanded,” exhibition curator Victoria Ingles explains. “But a number of them had been deployed to Malta just weeks before the war ended and they stayed on for many months to wind down operations.

“And in 1939 when war loomed again, many former WRNS lobbied the Admiralty to reform the women’s service. Originally they envisaged around a thousand individuals, but at its peak in 1944, there were more than seventy-four thousand serving women, compared to the thirty thousand men and women who serve in the Royal Navy today.”

In 1949, the WRNS was made a permanent service and took on ever more challenging roles, although it wasn’t until 1990 that going to sea became compulsory for new recruits. Three years later, they were integrated into the Royal Navy on equal footing with their male colleagues.