How interwar Commonwealth navies shared personnel

Modern accounts can make the interwar Royal Navy and Commonwealth navies appear more separate than they were in daily service. Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, South African, and British officers and ratings served throughout one another's ships and organizations. Their shared allegiance to the same monarch reinforced routine personnel interchange and common institutional practice. The United States therefore insisted on treating them as one naval system in the treaty framework. The arrangement was more integrated than a modern alliance in which national forces remain organizationally distinct. Carrier expertise could circulate across the Commonwealth before every navy possessed its own large carrier fleet.