one piece marine wishlist now that i'm reading dad naval fiction
firstly, this SBS (chapter 265) is crazy information, but gets at some of what i'm complaining about:
A good rule of thumb is to keep in mind that there is a three-rank difference between the Navy Headquarters and the Auxiliary. Captains in the Auxiliary would be lieutenants, and sub-captains would be sub-lieutenants, etc.
so no oda did not set out to write military realism but for my own mind and fanfiction, here is what i want
different ships. they are all identical "battleships" in the new world. smoker's ship as a captain and hina's rear admiral ship are slightly smaller, but this could less be a choice of rank than one of scale showing the grand line marine is serious and strong. it's also that navies of the age of sail had rival navies to capture ships from or brought privateers into service versus the world government has a military monopoly. even if they (lucratively) contract companies like galley-la while presumably also having their own shipyards and roadsteads, shipwrights have no fun at all unless they're building commercial or passenger or pirate ships
ranks that make sense. i'm not saying identically the 19th century royal navy but frankly my biggest point of contention is "captain" not necessarily meaning having command of a ship, e.g. post-timeskip tashigi and koby, which we can distinguish britishly with "captain" vs "post captain," i suppose. "captain" in the grand line is different from "captain" in a blue sea, which is how captain smoker has a small ship with which he follows the straw hats to alabasta versus two years later captain tashigi is still his second-in-command or XO (not lieutenant, a word that mans something) + koby has no command of his own.
differentiating rank and appointment. i mean drake's title being "captain of SWORD" when he "defected" at rear admiral. the most likely explanation is SWORD operates outside of the normal hierarchy and "captain" just reflects his authority over this unit where he, kujaku, and prince grus are really all the same rank. so examples of "appointments" we have that are probably commensurate with rank are: smoker -> g-5 base commander, sengoku -> inspector general, drake -> captain of SWORD. smoker, vergo and even filler g-8 jonathan are all vice admirals, and iirc the a few if not several vice admirals we get in egghead are also base commanders.
relatedly, units, squadrons, bases made more explicit, like how do groups of marines stay together? how does tashigi follow smoker from post to post? i suppose smoker speaks on her behalf, or requests her by name. garp's mentorship of koby and helmeppo is probably similar, and given that koby, helmeppo, and garp are all on levely escort duty, it's not unreasonable to think they're still attached to garp even if garp is ostensibly semi-retired. two years pre-canon, we do not know what rank drake held when he is at egghead with kizaru, but this is two years pre-canon and four years pre-timeskip, so he could possibly be rear, serving under kizaru. so frankly i would like rear admiral to mean something, like we have this decent idea of what a vice admiral can do, but if they're not attached to a base or fucking up a buster call, a lot of what we see them do post-timeskip is sit around a table while garp and sengoku tell stories at the new marine headquarters.
related to ships, legible financial incentives, which is not me falling for the propaganda of the military as a good employer, but naval prizes in the 18th and 19th centuries which were frankly! very pragmatic. like love for a country is not enough to make men risk their lives at sea at any sort of performance standard unless they're in competition with one another for life-changing wealth. this is why any time one piece falls back to "pirates destroy lives" as a motivator for the stock well-meaning, slightly conflicted marines (koby), i don't give a shit. this canNOT be it, not for all of you. this is why i like shit ass defectors like kuzan (imo) or axe hand morgan or diez barrels (SWORD dads). they make more sense! turning to piracy for personal financial gain or some sort of ego thing. one piece attempts to get more ethical with various marines talking about their individual ideas of justice, which only shows that that kanji on their coats is so variable as to essentially be meaningless. where is MATERIAL MOTIVATION. axe hand morgan is actually the most real
all of this is to say rank in a real age of sail navy (at least the british navy) seems closely tied to having a ship to command and said ships being organized into squadrons with home ports, and one piece is really boring if these ships are all the same and there is no shortage of them. there is no thrill to be had in promotion besides presumably higher pay and greater responsibilities, but i also don't get a sense that anyone in one piece, pirate or marine, gets a real thrill out of the labor of sailing and maintaining a ship quite like a helmsman or a shipwright, or that they get any reward out of it worth noting
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