Sir Frederick William Erskine Nicolson, 10th Baronet Nicolson, depicted as a Royal Navy midshipman by John Hayter and William Sharp.
In an 1807 audience with George III, the British naval hero and Admiral of the Fleet John Jervis, Earl of St. Vincent, complained that too many noble and socially elite midshipman were hurting the service:
I have always thought that a sprinkling of nobility was very desirable in the Navy, as it gives some sort of consequence to the service; but at present the Navy is so overrun by the younger branches of nobility, and the sons of Members of Parliament, and they swallow up all the patronage, and so choke the channels to promotion, that the son of an old Officer, however meritorious both their services may have been, has little or no chance of getting on.
Quoted by Samantha A. Cavell in Midshipmen and Quarterdeck Boys in the British Navy, 1771-1831.
St. Vincent himself came from relatively humble beginnings, and Captain Taprell Dorling described his hardships as a midshipman in his book Men o' War:
We are told by some of St. Vincent's biographers that twenty pounds was all that his father could afford for his son's outfit and pocket money, and that, for the next five or six years, he was forced to live in a state of penury... he is said to have exchanged from ship to ship to obtain his pay tickets, which he cashed at 40 per cent. discount; to have sold his bedding and slept upon the bare deck; sometimes to have made and mended his own clothes; invariably to have done his own washing; never to have eaten fresh meat, and to have bartered what he could save of his scanty sea service rations for fruit and vegetables.
It's understandable that the Admiral St. Vincent might not have been too fond of highly privileged young gentlemen.
