In M&C Far side of the world there are quite a few young children (I estimate ages of around ten onwards) apparently in positions of authority. At one point the youngest of the uniformed kids is temporary captain of the ship.
Was this normal practice in British/European Naval ships in those days? If so, why?
Horatio Nelson joined at 12 and was a Captain by 20, so they must learn pretty quickly.
I’ll just hang out here and wait for a better answer.
They weren’t just children, they were the children of the better sort of people. That little blonde boy was Lord Blakeney, Midshipman, born to command and all that rot. Children of commoners were lucky to get a job as a powder monkey or bum boy.
As to why there were children (or more precisely, boys) serving – running a sail-powered ship is really difficult. All those sails, all those ropes (hence, learning the ropes), navigating …you had to start young to master the craft.
I assumed that they were naval cadets, training for a career in the Royal Navy.
The replies so far make sense, and it seems like an understandable thing to do, but when I first saw the film it struck me as odd. You don’t see 10 year olds in uniforms on the bridge of a modern aircraft carrier or battleship.
Was life-excetancy really so bad back then that they could start them at say 15 or 20?
It was about the class-based society, for one thing, with the children of the “better” families being in position to become midshipmen and then later officers. Regardless of their age, the crewmen had to obey their orders. Nobody protested this; it was a given.
There probably was a lower life expectancy at the time, as already noted, too.
And I don’t think kids at that time were really allowed much time to be kids. They had to grow up in a hurry. The young gentlemen were expected to get accustomed to life at sea very quickly.
I do wonder how much time a 12 year old spent learning trigonometry and how much time he spent commanding a boat’s crew.
Kids were tougher back then. Dodge ball was mandatory.
This keeps on getting contradicted, only for the contradiction to get contradicted. but it appears that historically, there was no concept of “childhood”.
Barbara Tuchman asserts that is so during the Middle Ages. Maude’s son led an army of Flemish mercenaries at 14. So sometime between the 12th century and modern history the ‘cult of childhood’ arose. 
And it was played with musket balls.
It’s a ‘class’ thing and it is a no-childhood thing.
We only started getting childhoods when people could make enough to support a family. Kids still work in factories in poorer countries.
Also, promotion in the Royal Navy was by seniority. So if you got started early, you had a better chance of being an admiral before you were too old to serve any longer.
The cult of childhood arose during the Victorian times iirc. If you read essays about fairytales and how they’ve changed from the originals this almost always pops up.
As to the OP yeah, it was a class thing. You could be dumb as a rock (okay, not quite but close…) but if you had the breeding you got to be in charge.
No, but you do see kids fresh out of college giving orders to kids fresh out of high school. In the days of fighting sail, actual experience on a ship took the place of high school and college.
I don’t really think it had much to do with life expectancy – it’s not like people in those days started dying of old age in their thirties. A large part of the low life expectancy was the horrendous infant mortality rate.
There was definitely a different view of childhood… but as has been mentioned, and as far as I can make out, the experts seem to keep batting around how different it was.
For most of the period in question, middies could sign up officially at 12, and would get increasing responsibility as they went on. They would then be examioned for lieutenant rank, IIRC after 18. A captain, I think, had to be 21, faced similar testing, and was effectively on probation for three years. After that, seniority kicked in and if he lived long enough he would die an admiral. Of course none of that guaranteed he would get a ship; many captains (and admirals!) spent periods of peace sitting ashore on half-pay. Even though seniority theoretically controlled a captain’s career, “interest” (i.e. influence) and ability had far more effect.
Unless the Admiralty shot you to encourage the others.
Yeah, but Byng still died an admiral.
Touche’
For what it’s worth, the concept of cadets and midshipmen still exists in the U.S. military. While in college on an NROTC scholarship, I was a 19-year old midshipman who had a summer training cruise on a ballistic missile submarine patrol. I was put in charge of the Torpedo Division and reported to the Weapon’s Officer (Weps). (Many subs actually just do without a Torpedo Division officer, and the Weps handles the division himself.)
In any event, though I was youngest person in the division and extremely green, I was (nominally) in charge, which was considered to be excellent training for when I was commissioned an officer two years later. So the concept still exists to the present time, though not to the extent of having pre-teens serve aboard warships.