I wouldn’t know which are the oldest, but the french were created before 1664 too. The first regiments were organized in 1622 by Richelieu.
They were caled “navy artillery” because for some reason the “marine infantry” was supressed during the revolution and napoleonic era and mixed with the navy artillerymen. Possibly because there was a general tendancy to deprive the navy of these troops in order to have them fighting on land, the navy didn’t like that, and thought they were less likely to be asked to hand over “navy artillery” than “marine infantry”.
By the way, I believed that Nelson was killed by a cannon ball, not by rifle fire. Am I wrong?
You are wrong. All accounts indicate a sharpshooter in the mizzen top of the French ship along side the Victory hit him high in the shoulder with the musket ball passing through his epaulet and lodging against the spine after doing a whole batch of damage to stuff high in Nelson’s chest. It took Nelson a couple of hours to die and he was probably paralyzed from mid chest down. If he had been struck by a 12 lb, or 24 lb, or 32 lb cannon shot he would have been, in Stan Rodger’s words, smashed like a bowl of eggs.
FYI, the Coast Guard also uses “Aye” and all the traditional Navyspeak terms.
All of this information is quite correct. However, I do have something to add.
“Aye” is used on sound-powered phone circuits, internal powered voice nets, and when communicating through voice tubes (yes, they’re still used).
When used in this fashion, it is an answer by the called station. Conversations would sound something like this:
Bridge, combat.
Bridge, aye.
Recommend course change to one-fife-zero, to avoid surface contact.
Recommend course change to one-fife-zero, aye.
The last readback was so that combat, the ship’s Combat Information Center, knew that the bridge had the full message.
When the officer of the deck and captain decided to act on the recommendation, they would let combat and other watchstations know by passing word on the circuit in a similar manner.
Incidentally, sound-powered phones are interesting pieces of technology themselves. Nearly identical to Bell’s invention, they require no external source of power to operate, and are thus extremely robust. The Navy has been using them for about a century. Today, they are used on more modern warships only as a backup, but they still serve an important role.