Leading Wren Cook, Chief Wren Telegraphist).

Ratings' titles were suffixed with their trade (e.g. Female sailors are still informally known by the nicknames 'wrens' or 'Jennies' ('Jenny Wrens') in naval slang.īefore 1993, all women in the Royal Navy were members of the WRNS except nurses, who joined (and still join) Queen Alexandra's Royal Naval Nursing Service, and medical and dental officers, who were commissioned directly into the Royal Navy, held RN ranks, and wore WRNS uniform with gold RN insignia. The WRNS was finally integrated into the Royal Navy in 1993, when women were allowed to serve on board navy vessels as full members of the crew. That same year, Chief Officer Pippa Duncan became the first WRNS officer to command a Royal Navy shore establishment. In October 1990, during the Gulf War, HMS Brilliant carried the first women officially to serve on an operational warship. Vonla McBride, who had experience in human resource management, became the Director of the WRNS in 1976, and members of the WRNS were subject to the same discipline as men by the next year. The key change was that women would become subject to the Naval Discipline Act 1957. In the 1970s it became obvious that equal pay for women and the need to remove sexual discrimination meant that the WRNS and the Royal Navy would become one organisation. The WRNS remained in existence after the end of the war although Mathews retired in 1947 and Goodenough had died the year before. RN and WRNS officers enjoying evening drinks by the Grand Harbour in Malta, 1964.

Wren 1.6.10 download