Let's Toast
Navy bans historic toast to the ‘wives and sweethearts’
Tom Coghlan Defence Correspondent
Last updated at 12:01AM, June 22 2013
The Royal Navy has banned two of its oldest traditions because they no longer reflect the gender balance of the Senior Service.
From tonight, for the first time in 200 years, Royal Navy officers aboard ship will no longer utter the traditional Saturday night toast to “Our Wives and Sweethearts”.
The toast, which elicits the unofficial response: “May they never meet!” has been changed because there are so many women officers at sea. The instruction changing the toast to “Our Families” was issued this week by the new Second Sea Lord, Vice-Admiral David Steel.
One of the other daily toasts, a tradition dating from Nelson’s era, has also been changed. The Tuesday night toast to “Our Men” becomes “Our Sailors”.
Women have served in surface vessels since 1990 and are due to join the nuclear submarine fleet this year. Commander Sarah West became the first female frontline ship’s captain last year, in the frigate HMS Portland.
“To reflect cultural changes and our modern and inclusive Navy, two of the naval toasts have been updated,” a Navy spokesman said. “The Royal Navy values the diversity and range of its personnel and it is only right that its traditional toasts should reflect the fact that women have been at sea for over 20 years.”
The daily toasts, which follow the loyal toast to the Queen, are otherwise unchanged. On Sunday, sailors will continue to toast “Absent friends”, on Monday, “Our ships at sea” and on Wednesday, “Ourselves (as no one else is likely to concern themselves with our welfare!)” Thursday’s toast to “A bloody war or a sickly season”, reflects the improved prospects of promotion that came with 19th-century war and pestilence. Friday’s toast to “A willing enemy and sea room” refers to other navies’ reluctance to face the British at the height of their powers and sailing ships’ need for room to manoeuvre.
The new toasts got a mixed reception from retired seamen.
Admiral Lord Boyce, a former Chief of the Defence Staff, said: “In my view this is an unnecessary genuflection in the name of PC-manship and I have no intention of following it. It’s broken with tradition unnecessarily. Are we to await new orders telling us to ‘person the ship’ or ‘person the sides’?”
Admiral Lord West, a former First Sea Lord, was less concerned: “I don’t have any problem with the change from ‘men’ to ‘sailors’.” While saying the loss of the response to the “wives and sweethearts” toast “takes away the comedy”, he called the change “sort of inevitable”, but added that he might object more strongly if the other toasts were changed.
Rear-Admiral Chris Parry said: “Toasts have to reflect the society they are made in. It goes back to the all-male service and the reply is the Navy’s private joke. I think in all-male gatherings there will be a conspiracy to keep it going.”
Commander Nigel “Sharkey” MacCartan-Ward, who flew Sea Harrier jets in the Falklands conflict, said: “I can’t understand why the Navy is bowing to this pressure. I wouldn’t. There’s nothing wrong with ‘wives and sweethearts’. Couldn’t we have ‘husbands, wives and sweethearts’?”
A former submariner, Lieutenant Nick Lockwood, described the news as “a wretched thing”.
“They’ve spoiled a perfectly good joke,” he said. “The thing that worries me is that there are people in the Admiralty sweating over this sort of thing.”