Could lower-class sailors rise to command?

Did a sailor need to be middle class to rise far, or could someone from the lower classes advance?

Lower-class sailors could reach captain and, in rare cases, admiral, but the climb was harder than for someone with education, patronage, and a middle-class start.

Sailors from the lower classes could rise to captain, and rare individuals who began as boy sailors reached admiral. A middle-class starting point made that climb easier. Long careers without a fixed modern retirement age gave some men more time to advance. Nathaniel Dance offers a concrete example of the time involved: he joined at about eleven and served roughly forty-five years before retiring at about fifty-six. His pension of £500 a year and £5,000 available to invest made retirement practicable. These opportunities existed alongside substantial differences in starting position and a hazardous life at sea.