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After being sold by the Royal Navy in 1897, HMS Trincomalee was renamed Foudroyant and, under that name, was a training and holiday ship throughout most of the 20th century.
The ship was based off Portsmouth and then Gosport from the 1930s to 1987 and received trainees from schools, colleges and youth organisations.
The trainees learnt all kinds of seamanship including knot tying, signalling, rowing and sailing using the ship’s fleet of small boats.
For three hundred and ten years the Royal Navy hunted down, persecuted and sometimes even hanged homosexuals found within their ranks.
Execution ceased after 1835, but life imprisonment remained a reality. The partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1967 did little to sway the opinion of the Armed Forces, and it was not until 2000 that real change was made.
Homosexuality and gender identity or expression has remained largely hidden throughout history. With positive representation increasing in importance, so it becomes necessary for the heritage sector to celebrate their LGBTQ+ role models of today.
It has been legal to serve the Royal Navy for gay, lesbian and bisexual people since 2000, and legal for trans-people to openly serve since 2014.
Below are a few examples of members of the Naval LGBTQ+ community who have developed long, successful careers both in and out of the Royal Navy.
Queer: a controversial term steeped in prejudice. For many, it remains an uncomfortable, even unacceptable term. But in recent years has been reclaimed within the LGBTQ+ community, even becoming an academic term when referring to the history and study of sexuality and gender.
• National Museum of the Royal Navy’s Andrew Baines to receive prestigious prize for his conservation work on HMS Victory
• A new support system was implemented over three years, saving the ship from collapse
• Despite closures and the effects of coronavirus the project saw completion in December 2020
Andrew Baines, Deputy Executive Director of Museum Operations at the National Museum of the Royal Navy has been awarded the Victory Medal for his conservation work on HMS Victory.
Almost 300 years after the 1555 Buggery Act made homosexuality punishable by death, James Pratt and John Smith became the last men to be executed for sodomy in 1835.
But an investigation into the criminality of homosexuality did not take place until 1954. Known as the Wolfenden Report, the controversial document was quickly rejected.
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