My interest in this was piqued by your comment, Karl, and from my reading, it seems that some of the disagreements between Lindemann (captain of the Bismarck) and Lütjens (task force admiral) were the types of disagreements you might expect. Lindemann was thinking tactically (hunt down the Prince of Wales that had attacked Bismarck and which had itself been damaged after a brief engagement), while Lütjens was thinking more strategically and following orders to “avoid unnecessary contact with similar enemy units” in hopes that Bismarck could still successfully break out into the Atlantic.
After Bismarck was damaged, Lindemann apparently wanted to retrace their route through the Denmark Strait and return to Bergen, Norway. Lütjens wanted to follow orders and continue trying to make their way south.
The disagreements were settled very simply – Lütjens overruled Lindemann and ordered a course set for occupied France. Admiral Lütjens also apparently ordered Prinz Eugen (the other ship in the task force), to break away from the Bismarck.
Interestingly, the original term was “Captain of the ship’s company”- i.e. the Captain was the captain of the soldiers/fighting men on board the ship. The Master was the head guy of the sailors. So originally Captains were captains, as this usage came about in the late medieval period as well, when there wasn’t too much distinction between soldiering on land or sea.
Eventually, this morphed into ship captains being more equivalent to land-based colonels, as ships got larger, they were roughly equivalent to land-based regiments.
Sort of… the way I understand it is that as time passed, ship Captains ended up commanding the whole ship, and since larger ships were roughly equivalent in manpower to a regiment, that’s why land Colonels = naval Captains in rank.
However, there were a lot of ships out there that were smaller than a Captain’s billet (i.e. ‘unrated’ ships) but larger than what they’d let a Lieutenant command, so they came up with the rank of Master and Commander to distinguish the captains of those ships from actual Captains (Post Captains), and from mere Lieutenants.
This was based on the size of the ship primarily- they were mostly sloops and smaller ships.
So what you had was basically Lieutenants commanding boats and very small ships - for example, Captain James Cook commanded HMS Endeavor on his first voyage of discovery as a Lieutenant.
Masters & Commanders commanded mid-range ships- basically anything smaller than a sixth-rate (28 guns) or 20-24 gun ‘post ships’. I have the impression it was nebulous on the lower-end of the scale though.
Master and Commander was kind of a weird animal though; it was a rank, but a ship-commander rank, meaning that even on enormous first rates like HMS Victory, there was just the Captain, several Lieutenants, and a bunch of Midshipmen. Masters and Commanders were strictly ship commanders, unlike today, when Commander is just a rank, not a job title, and there can be several Commanders serving aboard a large ship like an aircraft carrier.
I’ve always thought they had it backwards. It seems like the rank you have the most of, your average, newer inexperienced soldiers would be called “general,” in the “of no particular importance” usage. Your highest ranks, of which there were fewer and much more selective, should obviously be “Privates.”
The mnemonic I always used to keep the order straight was “Be My Little General” for Brigadier O7, Major O8, Lieutenant O9 and Generals O10.
It’s “general” in the sense of “broad”, or “big picture”, as opposed to “specific”.
A lieutenant commands one specific platoon of 50 men, and trains with them, and gets to know them very well.
A general is in command of a much broader swath of people, and his connection with individuals is much more tenuous. In theory, any group larger than a regiment is temporary. Regiments can be re-shuffled as needed, and a general officer can be re-assigned to a different continent at a moment’s notice.
None of this is true for the US Army, at least. Generals have very close working relations with many people, although he tends to work with Colonels and Majors and Sergeant Majors instead of Staff Sergeants. I’ve worked in Corps level command offices, and there was no less traffic from subordinates than the S-3 1st Lieutenant had down in supply.
Regiments in the US Army are for the most part an esoteric relic of the past, where Brigades tend to be the standard largish unit of soldiers. A brigade combat team might be made up of three infantry battalions theoretically from different regiments, a cav squadron with its own regiment, and half a dozen assorted support companies all with different lineages supposing a connection to a larger regiment, which for all practical purposes is meaningless. There are a few Armored Cav Regiments that still function as a cohesive group, and there’s the 75th Ranger Regiment, but that’s it.
I know the British Army kept their regimental tradition alive longer, but I was under the impression that it, too, was on its way out as smaller-than-regimental groups were assigned as modular pieces to task groups.