Naval training and the peacetime cost of readiness

Naval apprenticeship provided a durable training system before modern officer schools. Midshipmen trained at sea for years before their captains put them forward for lieutenant examinations. Successful candidates received postings and continued to train and prove their competence in service. Maintaining that system required the state to collect taxes and devote people and money to training while at peace. An accountant could identify immediate savings by eliminating personnel, tax collection, and training, but the state would also lose options when war arrived. Readiness is therefore a grand-strategic choice to accept visible peacetime costs and avoid far greater wartime weakness.