The previous chapters discussed the importance of both naval and civil factors as they influenced the selection and appointment of young gentlemen in the last decades of the eighteenth century. In the broadest terms, the data showed a decline in the relative importance of connections to the peerage and an increase in the importance of naval connections. These developments ran concurrent with changing civil attitudes towards the qualities that defined gentility, which in turn affected the criteria set by recruiting captains in the selection of officer candidates; the ways in which the professions were perceived among different social orders, and the way that aspiring officers perceived themselves as gentlemen, regardless of their social origins. So far, however, these changing perceptions have only been observed through socio-professional data and various contemporary accounts.

The search for an independent means of evaluating the attitudes of aspiring officers to their position, both within the shipboard hierarchy and society at large, led to the Admiralty's courts martial records. The information provided in these records allowed an assesment to be made, albeit of bad behaviour, against the fixed points of law set down by the Articles of War. An examination of the crimes committed by junior officers during the last half of the eighteenth century provided insight into how young gentlemen interpreted their place in naval society, conceived of their authority, and then used or abused that authority.