A little poem to go with this page.

AND DO YOU THINK THAT THE ANAGRAM  FOR THE STATEMENT "THE SERVICEMANS PAY" BEST SAID WHAT WE USED TO THINK WHEN WE QUEUED IN LINE TO DOFF OUR CAPS AT THE PAY TABLE, NAMELY
PRAISE MY CASH EVENT?

The static matrix below [there is another matrix below it] shows the many titles and subjects of Royal Naval pay which HMS CENTURION developed at the end of the 1960's, at a time when pay was computerised for the first time.

If you can remember your RANK or RATING, your dates of service, branch and speciality, and if married, your family details for MA/ BSA/ FAMILY LOA etc, you can work out your Naval earnings and have fun comparing them with your pre and post Naval Service earnings. {The hieroglyphics in each box is HMS Centurion's computer recognition key}

Each year box is associated with a  PDF File which contains the published pay award for that year {and sometimes additional data}, but before you start to choose your years of interest please read the left-to-right moving file below.  When the YEAR is expressed on its own e.g. 1960, the file therein is the detail complete, but where a YEAR has figure suffixes, No 1 is the REPORT, No 2 is the Pay Rise whilst other suffixes show Doctors and Dentists Pay plus peripherals. If there is no report, then No 1 is the Pay Rise proper. The contents of the PDF Files reveal not only figures, but a social history of what was happening in the UK vis-a-vis what was happening in the Royal Navy, and believe me, it is fascinating - it is a lesson in Naval history and it will bring back many memories of those times now well over 50 years ago. In most cases. I have used COMMAND PAPERS {see below} for the data and when not available, Appendices to the Navy List. If you have a machine whose operating system [OS] is either Windows 2000 or Windows XP, remember that you can download for free ADOBE READER 7.0. Adobe Reader 7.0 will give better results on this page than would, say, 6.0 or earlier versions.  Regrettably, 7.0 does not work with other versions of Windows.

F I L E This FILE gives an overall picture of the policy of pay rises. Please use the BOOKMARKS in PDF Files.  Tip. If a PDF box, close it with its own associated closing 'X' {top right} but if it is a non-PDF box, close it with the 'BACK' button top left on your browser.

For those of you who are viewing out of interest and are too young to have been a beneficiary of the pay shown in these PDF Files, I ask you not to assume the stance that "all things are relative" because they are not, at least in this case. Relativity works only on like-for-like comparisons, where for example low pay matched low house prices and other domestic costs/charges whereas high wages match high house prices etc. Today we are given to understand that the average household spends more that it earns, and the nation carries a debt which is so enormous that the 21st century debt is unsustainable.  Some, as we know, have mortgaged themselves for thirty and forty years hence, and that, assuming that both the husband and the wife will work full time until the debt, borrowed on the strength of two to three times joint earnings, is paid off, if it ever is? In the times covered by these earlier figures there were no credit cards; few below senior officers owned their own home; few went out for dinner because there was little money, few restaurants, and everything shut at 5pm daily and all day on Sundays; few had bank accounts and therefore loans  overdrafts and mortgages were not easy way-outs; few owned cars or had holidays.  Ones pay was ones income and one had to manage on it. Today, ones pay is added to, albeit irresponsibly, by using credit and loans, so the idea of saving for something is alien.  Now, every household, even when owned by young people is full of everything from cars gadgets  furniture, plus expensive holidays, and all bought on credit.   Thus, when you see that a sailor got just a few pounds to live on, that was it, so no amount of up'ing the amount by years of inflation to get to today's equivalent pay rates, can give a fair picture of the fortunes of the 1950 sailors vis-a-vis the sailors of today. The cheap house of the 1950's was unobtainable because mortgages could not be obtained and deposits could not be borrowed except from parents or parents-in-law.  Expensive homes today are relatively easy to get if one mortgages oneself up to the hilt to such a degree that one might die in debt leaving an awesome burden on those left behind.  REAL Pay therefore is RELATIVE, but the debt-laden SECOND borrowed income is certainly not and it is this latter way of doing things that creates a false picture of prosperity leading to a standard of living [or possession owning] that was only a pipe-dream to a royal sailor of 50 years ago. In 1953 very few homes had a television set or a telephone.

See also the following file which includes FULL naval pay details for 1939 - THE PHONEY WAR 1938 HOW TO JOIN THE ROYAL NAVY

© Godfrey Dykes