Reorganization of the British Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS) on the eve of World War II. The decision to reorganize the British WRNS, which had been disbanded after World War I, was made on November 22, 1938. Dame Katherine Furse, who had overseen the formation and direction of the WRNS in World War I, declined to accept the directorship. She deferred to youth, and Mrs. Vera Laugh ton Matthews was offered the post at the end of March 1939. Her deputy was E. M. (Angela) Goodenough, at that time the chief woman official at the admiralty.
Recruits were required to be British citizens with British-born parents. The age limits at first were from eighteen to forty-five but were later expanded to seventeen and a half to fifty. The first tasks allotted to the women were office work, motor transport, cooking, and general duties. Volunteers were accepted, trained, and put in uniform and service with the outbreak of the war.
The director was determined that women, given training, were capable of performing most shore duties. Objections were raised, but eventually the need for women prevailed. Numbers and job categories expanded dramatically with the demands of the war. By the end of 1940, there were 10,000 WRNS officers and ranks. Some of the new categories were radio technicians, aircraft mechanics, torpedo servicers and handlers, and harbor-boat crews. By the end of 1942, there were 1,801 WRNS officers and 36,554 ranks serving on the British islands and 952 officers and ranks serving overseas. By September 1944, there were 74,635 officers and ranks serving in 50 branches of duty with 90 job categories. In January 1941, the first WRNS were dispatched to Singapore. Eventually WRENS were stationed in South and East Africa, the Middle East, Australia, India, Ceylon, and Hong Kong.
The WRNS had suffered their first wartime casualty in World War I when Josephine Carr was lost in the torpedoing of the mail steamer Leinster on the Irish Sea in October 1918. The first WRNS casualties of World War II were suffered on September 14, 1940, when 10 WRNS were killed when their boarding house at Lee on Solent in Northern Ireland was hit by a German bomb. The first WRNS contingent sent to Gibraltar was lost en route on August 19, 1941, when the SS Aguila was torpedoed. Twelve cipher officers, ten radio operators, and a nurse lost their lives. In December, forty WRNS successfully crossed the Mediterranean in the first convoy to cross the sea from Gibraltar through the Suez. After they transferred to another ship for Colombo, however, it was torpedoed, and thirty-eight WRNS were lost.
After World War II, the WRNS was not disbanded as it had been after World War I. On February 1, 1946, the WRNS became part of the Royal Navy. In November 1946, Dame Vera Laughton Matthews, the director who had overseen the rebirth and the development of the service, was succeeded by Dame Jocelyn Woll-combe. In the 1970s, the WRNS came under the Naval Discipline Act, and the Queen’s Commission was given to WRNS officers. Closer integration of the WRNS with the Royal Navy continued in the 1980s. Women received the same training as men for shore support. Female personnel competed with their male counterparts for posts aboard ships in refit and for shore support for seagoing units, and during the Falk-lands War, WRNSs took over operations cells. Women also served at sea with helicopter units for brief postings and as part of Royal Marine postings to Northern Ireland.
