Petitioning was common practice in eighteenth-century Britain. Petitions ranged from appeals to parishes for poor relief, to applications to the King for pardon from execution. Naval and military petitions were an important subset. Army officers sent in their memorials for promotion, and similarly their naval brothers wrote to request a higher commission or a place on a larger ship. These men did so out of a sense of entitlement and in consideration of their service. For officers, however, it was often a case of who you knew, rather than what you knew. Men of the officer class drew heavily on their family and naval networks to advance their career, as we have seen, with varying degrees of frustration and success. Yet what about the vast majority who were not commissioned officers: common sailors and dockyard workers? The voices of these men and their families are seldom heard, lost to the historian by their lack of literacy and the scarcity of surviving correspondence. This group did not usually have the luxury of appealing to a relative, patron or family friend to advance their career or have their needs met. Instead, these men and women appealed or petitioned directly to the Admiralty Board or the Navy Board.