Tea at Four - Being A Woman In The Royal Navy: Missions, Travel & Social Life

Episode Date: April 8, 2026

What’s life really like as a woman in the Royal Navy for 33 years? From staying fit and navigating life at sea, what cabin life is like and the challenges of being a woman in a male-dominated environment, Warrant Officer Angie Cheal MBE joins Lauren and Christie to share her experience!In this episode, we explore:The truth about "Military Discipline"How the Navy unlocks huge travel & sporting opportunitiesThe "8% Woman" RatioFrom "Coddled" to MBE: How the Navy makes you resilient.Inside the cabins: Wi-Fi, makeup, and "suitcases."Find out more about the roles in the Royal Navy here: https://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/careers?utm_source=fournine&utm_medium=paidsocial&utm_campaign=+Burst_2_2025&utm_content=VT_Carousel

It was superstitious to have women on board ship. Can you date in the Royal Navy? Women are only 8% of the Navy. The ratio is crazy. So there was an annoying one that gets up extra early and wakes to all up because they're doing their makeup. Would that be you? I think now we've been to about 140 countries. Do you see sharks?

It sounded like an assault course, like a goat-eight mixed with Ninja Warrior. Hi, guys, welcome back to T.F. I'm Christy. And I'm Lauren. And this is the podcast where we talk all things that normally stay in a group chat. Today we are joined by Warrant Officer Andy Chill, MBE, to talk about what it means to be a woman in the Royal Navy. And we're gassed. Lovely to meet you.

Thank you for going on. Super excited to be here. We were laughing. You said you didn't realise this was a filmed podcast. No, I didn't. I didn't get anyone with the team here. I had to get up early and put some work in. I just thought people would be listening.

Like, I'd just listen to podcasts in the car. So if you are listening, think Amanda Holden, been at sea for 32 years. So, Angie, could you please tell us who you are and while you're here? Say, my name's Warren. Sir Angie Chiel, MBA. So I have spent 33 years in the Royal Navy of being a communicator to a photographer and now I work in naval recovery. So I've just come on today to have a chat with you about the experience of being in the Navy and what to expect. It's obviously worth mentioning you've got an MBA at the end of your name. How'd you get that? I know. Very exciting. So the job that I do in recovery, basically I kind of started off putting people on courses. The people that were ill in the Navy, mentally, physically, long-term illness. on these courses that Help for Heroes were providing. And sadly during COVID, support for help for heroes kind of went down.

They didn't have the funding to do it. And so I was a little bit like, oh my God, I don't think I have a job because my job was to put people on their courses. So I thought, well, do you know what? I'm going to see if I can get some money together and run my own. And to cut a long story short, we went from having no courses to now four or five years later running 80 courses a year. That's incredible.

So that was why I got recognised for the work I'd done, helping support people with mental illness. I haven't got the medal yet, so I'm still waiting to go up to the palace and get that. We were speaking earlier. My context of what you do is like I went to see Wuthering Heights at the weekend. And one of the first adverts was a Royal Navy advert, you know, was it born in the Isle of White, made in the Royal Navy?

What was it that inspired you to join all those years ago? Oh gosh. I just didn't want a boring job. I just didn't want to be going into an office every day and coming home. And I couldn't see myself doing sort of anything normal and I just wanted some adventure. And one day I was sort of sneaking out of school early and I got caught by my year of head and she had to get at me and we just got chatting about what were you going to do.

And I was like, I don't know. My mum keeps saying the armed forces. She said, right, for your punishment, you can pop down and have a look in the school career section and have a look for armed forces careers for women. So I went down and I mean, this is like 90. 90. And I pulled out this folder for like women in the armed forces, a big chunky folder. I opened it up and there was one leaflet for the Royal Navy in there.

So I was like, oh, and the careers office is pretty close by, we'll go down and have a look. And it was kind of as simple as that, to be honest. And I just sort of thought, I've got to do something and why not this? And do you know what? I kind of thought, I'll just do four years. And you know, and then we're 33 years later. Yeah. I have to ask, like, when you hear about people going into this profession, it's usually from the point of view of, like, discipline.

Like, they kind of want to go into something where they're, um, you know, discipline like at that point of your life were you did you know really what this entailed fully absolutely not no i'm embarrassed to say i didn't ever watch the news i had i had no idea in fact it was my dad that just said if you're going to join up you know we had the falklands war in like the 80s and he was like you know one day you might have to go to war and i was a bit like yeah okay i'll cross that bridge when i come to it so it was really unprepared i think for what the navy was going to be um but equally i don't think you can't prepare that much because it's quite an alien environment. And when you drive past the military base, don't you look at the barbed wire on the top

and go, what's going on in there? Who knows? Who knows what's going on in there? So I was completely unprepared. I joined up thinking I was joining the Women's Royal Naval Service, so I wasn't going to go to see. And I didn't know they'd updated the policy. And so when I joined, I get there and they gave me, week three or four, they gave me a rifle. And I genuinely thought they were going to go, ha kidding. Not the girls. It's going to be rubbish. And they didn't know. It was like, seriously. We're going to be shooting guns. Cool, let's have a go. And then it wasn't until about week five,

where I was jumping off a sort of a 12-foot diving board into a lake and getting in a life raft that I went, oh my God, I'm going to see. I think I remember sitting that life raft with everybody staking wet, thinking freezing cold, oh well, that sounds more exciting than just being a shoreside ren as they were back then, women in their own naval service. So yeah, but I don't sound very bright saying that.

But I think they didn't ever write to me and tell me that anything had changed. It's just the policy had changed in the time that it took me from joining up to get in. But I just saw it sounds a bit more exciting. So see what happens. When you're applying, do you have to look a certain way to join the Royal Navy? Does anyone get in that applies? It's not that anyone gets in. So there is obviously a recruiting process where you sit in exam, you do a medical.

So there is a process to get in. but it's designed to get people through, the right people through. And people always say about like how fit you need to be. I had a year waiting to join up and I thought I needed to be like super fit. So I spent a year training really, really hard. And I got there and I was one of the fittest ones that. So a decent level of fitness will certainly make it loads easier for you. Because as it is, you know, training's difficult because you're learning new stuff all every single day.

It's tiring. It's very, very long days they get you up. at six in the morning and you're running around until 10 o'clock at night. So it's really busy. So if you've got, if you're fit, it's just one thing that's in the bag. If you can already do some press-ups, if you can already, if you've already got some good strength and the Navy should. I got nothing.

It's the Navy fitness test. It used to be like a run. But now they've changed it to a much more practical test, which makes me more sense because you could argue, does a chef on a war shape need to be able to run three a mile and a half in under 10 minutes no he doesn't but what he does need to be able to do is pull someone out of a fire or carry somebody or lift something so now the navy fitness test is way more targeted on a practical fitness for when you're on a warship looking after each other fighting fires the fire fighting equipment's quite heavy so it's much more about that now than it is

just about general fitness wow I know this seems like a silly question but maybe stripping it back like what is what is the purpose of the royal navy like and what made you go into this rather than just like the army it was just that leaflet oh perfect another leaflet do you know what though i'm so glad i think had i known then what i know now i'm so glad i joined the navy because i think now we've been to about 140 countries and a huge part of that is thanks to the thanks to the navy um i mean the navy's job is obviously as part of we're an island it's part it's to defend our island to to make sure that um if anything happens we've got a navy when you think that a navy is a allied platform that can deploy anywhere in the world with helicopters fighter jets missiles we are like a little sort of floating

armed forces base if you like and that's that's the job of the Royal Navy you know it's to protect and not everybody joins up for that reason people join for different reasons but i think it's important to keep that in mind and like my dad said you know one day you might have to go to war it's is important to keep that in mind as well. Yeah. Basic training is at HMS Rally, which is in Tall Point in Cornwall, and it's 10 weeks. So it's 10 weeks of preparing you basically to be in the Navy. And then you go on to your trade training, and then mine was like six months training.

But then that ramps down, you know, that shouting at you and you're there to be professionally trained. So you're going to lessons every day and learning stuff. And I think that's what's really lovely about the Navy is it hugely builds your confidence of every little thing you achieve along the way, every milestone. and there's tons of them in training. And how often from training are you getting deployed? So, I mean, when our guys come out of training,

they're all desperate to go to sea because that's what you've just spent time training for. So in between finishing your trade training and going to see, you do some other courses, one of which is your basic C survival course. And that course is awesome. You go into the firefighting simulator and learn to fight fires. You go into a damage control simulator,

which is amazing. And it moves. It's this huge metal container thing. It looks like the inside of a ship. And it moves and they flood it with water and you have to plug up the holes. So if the ship ever gets hit, you can learn to stop it.

You do gas mask training. And you do the whole week of all this stuff. I feel like for me, it sounded like an assault course. I can go eight mixed with Ninja Warrior. It sounds like I'm excited. Like I want to do like a day. Yeah.

Maybe I should do like a trial day. Let's see how I'll do. Do you do that? Is that possible? They don't offer you a child day. As someone that obviously doesn't have experience within this, when you are being deployed, is it always in the same places?

Are you with the same team? Is it men and women? Or is it just women? In the Navy, you move roughly every two years, which actually really keeps it fresh. So every two years. So my first ship I had was H-Mis Broadsword. I did a Caribbean tour out of the West Indies,

which was amazing. I saw so many different places. Came off that. did some more training, went on to Northumberland. I was on there three years. We did a Mediterranean trip on that, Falklands. I went down to Falklands, which was actually amazing as well. And then I then retrained as a photographer.

Then I went on Ocean, which was a huge helicopter carrier, Marine carrier, two, the 22 helicopters on board, a thousand ships company, sorry, there's only a 300 ships company, but when we deploy with the flight on and the Marines on, we were over a thousand people. So that was quite a different environment. And everywhere you go, you go somewhere different. So that was when Iraq and Afghan started.

So we were down in the Gulf. I think in between that, I got to do a Baltic trip on the Campbelltown. So it really just depends. We have loads of adventurous training opportunities and sports. I couldn't even tell you how many sports there are in the Navy. Everything from motorbikes to fishing teams to obviously we have football and rugby teams. I was on the Navy Bob Slade team for 10 years. Yeah, so I went out to Norway and Germany and Bob Slade on the tracks.

So at one point, we were doing quite well because there's hardly anybody that does it. So there was only eight teams in the whole of Great Britain. And the first three were the Great Britain team. And then there was like the rest of us. So I think at one point I was about fourth in Great Britain just out of default. It was only about 18. Wow. And then when I kind of gave up that, I started diving.

And every year I put in for a diving expedition. And I went out to the Maldives on one, Belize, Gibraltar. So there's amazing opportunities in the Navy. And I think there are two types of people. There are people that go in and just kind of do their job. And there are people that go in and go, what else is there? What more can I do? And like, I branch changed to photographer.

And being a comms rating was okay. But being a photographer was like insane. You know, I got to meet most of the royal family, flying. You know, people pay hundreds of, hundreds of pounds flying a helicopter. It's flying in one nearly every day. And I think if you go into the Navy with the attitude of what I'll do this for you, but what am I going to get back out of it?

You have such a better time. There's so many good opportunities. People just need to go in and grab them and find out more of what's going on. So can you date in the Royal Navy? I mean, women are only, I think we're 8% of the Navy, 7% or 8% of the Navy. It is a more difficult lifestyle. And certainly if you have a partner before you join up, sometimes it's difficult to maintain that relationship

because if you go, I'm away for six months. That doesn't go down very well with a lot of people. Relationships on board, it's a bit like if you, some of it's like if you had a relationship in this office, you wouldn't be kissing and doing stuff. And it's the same on a warship. You cannot do anything on the ship. So if you have a relationship, you wait to the ship gets alongside

and then you can go off and date and you can do. you can do what you want. If you're a different rank that can cause problems. So if it's an officer and a junior rate and you're in the same of chain of commands, they're your boss. Normally they get separated. One of you will get taken off the ship. And you're kind of better off fessing up to that and saying, how do we manage this relationship? We want to start a relationship. What do we do? Most people are really super professional, to be honest. It's not normally a problem. People are grownups about it. So it's not normally a massive problem. But of course relationships form. You know, it's human nature.

Yeah. Yeah. Do men and women get you treated differently? In terms of what's expected of you? They're absolutely not. No. No. I think what I really actually liked about the Navy

was the fact that you do get treated exactly the same and what's expected of you is exactly the same. And it's kind of scary and exciting at the same time. And I think when I joined up, there was fewer women at sea. We hadn't been at sea very long. And I definitely felt a massive push to prove myself. So if there was a difficult job,

or nobody he wanted to go up the mast and I was communicated back then and the flags, we used flags to communicate with other ships and the cleat had got stuck at the top and somebody had to go up and I was the only one that wasn't scared of heights so it's always my job to go up and I was like, you know, you're a bunch of big blakes

are all scared to do it. But actually I quite liked that I could do something that they couldn't. I think, yeah, there's little things that I would do I was always quite strong. I was always into weight training so it never bothered me to get stuck in and really prove myself.

and I would hope I haven't been to see for a while but I would really hope that now it feels like everybody's just a team, whether you're a man or a woman, you're treated the same. And certainly I've come across things in my life where people have sort of said like, what happens, you know, when a bloke tells you you can't do something?

It's like that never happens. In fact, it's the opposite. Like I was out in Belize once and they were like, we need someone to drive through the jungle and I was kind of the obvious choice out of the team. And so there's me driving this massive like four by four. thing through swamps and that and I was like oh my god please don't know it get stuck somewhere because I'll be so embarrassed and I actually didn't really want to do it but I was like I'm being told

to do it if a guy was told to do it we just have to get on with it so I'm just going to have to get on with it and I didn't get stuck it was all good god amazing and obviously as a woman you have your monthly cycle do you get a menstrual day off if you're if you're not feeling great like how does that work I've never taken a menstrual day off I mean I know some women with um is it entry me chases who it's a real problem. And there's a doctor on board, a shipment that you were deployed. You would go and see a doctor. And if they felt you needed to be stood down, as we call it, in the Navy, you go to bed.

Or you stay in the sickbay if you need to in the medical centre. So there's things in place if you are feeling really, really bad. Again, things have come a long way. I can remember deploying and buying like six boxes of tampons before we went. So I didn't have to go to the little shop on board and go, you can have a Twitter? dark Coke and a pack of tampal. When there's a queue of 20 people behind, you know. But now a lovely doctor, I'm going to give her a shout out, Dr Ruth Guest.

She's a Navy doctor, started an initiative to bring in reusable sanitary products, so cups, pants, and the ships got sent out. I think 172 packages got sent out to ships all over the globe, to the Royal Marines Band. We have a lot of women in the Royal Marines Band, and to the women on submarines. and they have said the feedback is like a game changer, you know, way less leaks, can sleep without worrying about it.

So it's really good that the Navy are thinking about how do we make things better for women? And we've also got like the Women's Naval Service Network, which is just really a group of obviously mostly women, although men can join, that just supports women being in the Navy. So if you need that support, there's people you can ask. We have to ask, we're very curious about what is the ship like?

Yeah, like I want to know, like where do you sleep? leap can I bring my personal items my mum used to go when's your next cruise and I was like you need to come on and see how far away from a cruise liner this is it's really really functional showers were always good so say that thanks to our stokers we always have nice hot powerful showers the beds always comfy but you are in a little cabin with three beds each side and you get a locker to put your stuff in you've got a little hanging space and some drawers and I always loved my suit locker which was literally the size of a suitcase. But you could get loads in there

because if you put your suitcase and you pull it out, so that's where I used to keep all my civis. So civilian clothing. Sorry, Navy's slang. So all my civis would be wedged in the suitcase and then my uniform would be in my locker. And then when the ship came alongside, we'd be like, get you, get you to see.

I'm wading through trying to find your clothes. So you can have a decent amount of stuff for there. Under the bed, you've got a boot locker for your shoes. and then there's one hanging wardrobe for your uniform, your number one uniform that you've got in there as well. So it's okay, yeah, it's certainly workable and you can take on all your own beauty products and wedge them in somewhere.

Well, I'm pretty sure, is there time to like to do makeup in the morning or once it's like, time to go, time to go? I never bothered. Really? You're stuck at sea. It's the same old faces. But people do, people do get up. It depends on what time you want to get up.

So there's an annoying one that gets up extra early and wakes you all up because they're doing their makeup. Would that be you? That'd be me going to the gym, like a 4 a.m. start, so maybe I'll be a... No, the day is the gym, no? Yeah, but then, yeah, it's true actually. You don't need a wake up early for everything. Yeah.

Did you find your community, the girls that you were living, working with, like, have they become friends for life? Oh, 100%. Do you know what? You move around so much, but certainly, like, most jobs you collect one that you really liked, and then you sort of keep in touch and you do move every two years so it does make friendships harder

and if people had like really good friends at home you're relying on when you go home and leave to see your friends at home but you do make amazing friends in the Navy and I was quite uptight I think before I joined the Navy and I can remember in training struggling with people like putting stuff on my bed and then you just get to learn to be like

just go with the flow and that's the path of least resistance you kind of find a way to work together because you have to you know the expression and you know, we're all in one boat. We're all in the same boat. We are all in the same boat. We've got to learn to get on with each other. And most of the time, they're lovely.

And I've had amazing friends and they tend to be the ones, you know, the ones that you don't see for ages. Then when you get back together, it's like you've never been apart. Yeah. How much downtime do you get? If you've got a whole day, like when's a you time?

So on a shit, day to day, there isn't really any downtime. And do you know what there's no point? Because what are you going to do? You're not going to go anywhere. So you get a bit. I go to the gym. When you finish work,

at four till dinner, sort of four till six. I used to go to the gym in that time, but before dinner as well, we have rounds and you have to make sure that when you live is all cleaned up. So I'd go to the gym, I'd do that. And then if I wasn't on a night watch, you might watch film. But there isn't tons of downtime.

But when a ship gets alongside, that's when they're really good at giving you like what we call a Saturday routine or a Sunday routine, rather than a working day routine. So everybody gets up and kind of just make sure everything's all right in their department and then you're all off from 10 o'clock in the morning. And again, you know, that's the time to really be what we're going to do. And like when our ship went to Naples, we went and visited like Pompeii.

And just it stays like that. I was like, I can't believe I'm here like seeing something like this. And we went up for Seavius and you're looking into the eye of a volcano. And you're like, this is pretty cool. You get to do and see some pretty cool things. Rio, the big J.C. and Shigalove Mountain, you know, there's amazing experiences that you have. and you think, you know, if it wasn't for the Navy, I probably wouldn't have come here, especially when you go to like smaller places in Ireland that people don't often visit.

It feels quite special that you get to go there. Yeah. So you get weekends off? Yeah, if the ships alongside. If the ships at sea, when I, it depends. Some of the ships I've had, if you're at sea at the weekend, it's a normal working day. Some of the ships I've had if you're at sea a long time. So when we were out in the Gulf, because we couldn't go alongside anywhere because, you know, the war was on.

they would do a Saturday routine at sea. And then it's quite nice when they do that. And a lot of ships do on like a Saturday, they'll have like a barbecue in the evening up on the flight deck. There definitely is that mentality of trying to get people to do stuff that's a bit fun because otherwise it become really monotonous. And again, just it's really weird sometimes just standing on the flight deck having your burger and as it gets dark watching the sun go down and having a beer and thinking,

it's still pretty cool. Well, obviously being on board, you've spoke about it offers a load of different job roles. you said you transitioned into being a photographer, right? What made you make that move? And how did it differ from your day to day that you were used to? Oh, so there are your bog standard jobs in the Navy and then there are other jobs. So like a policeman, a fiscal training instructor,

an air crewman. So the air crewmen are the ones that sit in the back of the helicopter and work out the weight, who's on board, what's on board. They sort of manage the back of the cab. And all those jobs, I think you can direct, entry, some of them now, and divers as well, and mine clearance, they do all the bomb disposal stuff. So some of those jobs you can join up as direct entry, but some of them you have to wait and be in the Navy. And photographer was one of those, but I didn't know the job existed. So I'm on my first ship

out in the West Indies. And as we were sailing out of port one day, there was a guy stood on the top of the hangar taking photographs. And I said to somebody, who's he? Where's he come from? And they went, oh, that's the photographer. He's just flown out. He'll be with this for two months, taking photos of what we're doing on deployment. And I was like, that's a job. So I'm like sat all night logging signals coming in and I could be like, flown out to take pictures. I was like, that looks amazing.

So kind of made my mind up that that's what I wanted to do. And it wasn't a quick move. It took a long time. But I got there in the end and it was well worth it because it was an absolutely incredible job being a photographer. It was really, really good. And what does that mean? Is it a case of like storytelling?

Is it for promotional stuff? Or is it, like, journalistic? What is it? We do a bit of everything. Sometimes it's... We're recording an event. Sometimes we're photographing people in training to promote that or to use the broachers. Everything is used to promote the Navy.

And it gave me amazing opportunities. You know, I photographed the Queen. Prince Harry, Prince William. Wherever the action was, you're kind of left. Maybe when we think of the Royal Navy and the Army, it seems quite strict and old-fashioned. Is it like that still now? I don't think it is at all. I think the Navy's actually been really good at adapting and becoming more modern.

Even like now, we have flexible working for people who have to travel a long way. They can do a longer days during the weeks. They get home for a longer weekend. The technology's all been updated recently. We've all got laptops. We can work from home if you're shore-based. I don't think it is so old-fashioned anymore. I mean, obviously, it's a discipline service.

But it's funny when people say, oh, I don't want to join the military because it's too discipline too rigid. Everywhere you work will be disciplined and rigid. So unless you're going to start your own company, you'll always have a boss. There'll always be somebody you don't like. And if there isn't somebody you don't like, it's probably you that's the idiot.

We've obviously covered the physical side of what it is to be in the Navy. It's worth touching on the mental, like how much that affects your mindset. How did you find that as a woman in that environment? In the beginning, it was all about like really proving myself. And definitely the Navy makes you really resilient. Being on board a ship is a strange environment.

It's long days. But I would like to think for a lot of people, the training teaches you to be resilient. Because that first initial part when you join the Navy at HMS Rally, it is arduous and it does teach you what you need to cope. There's been so many things about the Navy that's shaped who I've become. And they say, you know, I was born in Hertfordshire, but I was made in the Royal Navy.

And to a degree, it does. You know, it sets some morals and values for you. People in the Navy tend to be really polite. They have a good set of morals. On the whole, no one steals from each other. You know, you can trust people. And I think that's definitely what the Navy teaches you to do and hopefully teaches you to be mentally resilient.

Where I work now in recovery, we've been working really hard. And the 10 years that I've been in, things have changed and got better. And that there's huge support. So we have our own mental health teams. We have civilian mental health nurses. And we have military. So you can join the Navy and be a mental health nurse, which is really cool as well.

So there's a huge amount of support there for physical and for mental health. I've had my own struggles. I went through it myself, which is why now I'm really passionate about like giving back and helping people. Yeah. Because I kind of get it. I never got it before. I was like, you know, cheer up.

Yeah. But that doesn't work. So now I really get it. Yeah. And of course, you went away and you had children, how does the Navy handle the concept of stopping to have a family? Like, is it something you even speak about a lot on board?

I think for women, it is still difficult because we want to have it all. We want to have our careers. We want to have our families. We want to do everything. Since they put a maternity person into each major naval base, I think coming back from having a baby is risen by 90%. How long they say after that, I don't know, because it is hard.

So I actually had my twins when I left after my 22 years, and now I'm a reservist and I don't have to go to see. But a lot of women will have them before that time, and then there is always that kind of hanging over them that at some point they're going to have to go back to see. But then men do it every day. And we don't bat an eyelid out on men going away and go, oh, you're leaving your kids.

Whereas when a woman does it, it still is a bit like, oh you're leaving but women do you know if they want to stay in the Navy and they want to afford their career they do and if they don't there are options you can take unpaid leave you take a spatical for a while so that there are options to try and help women have children and stay stay in the Navy sounds like a basic question I know men have to shave their heads do you have to have a ban like cadet Kelly so they only have to shave their heads in training yeah but I always had a bun I had a bun for, I don't know, 30 years, and then they changed regulations. You're joking.

So I can have a ponytail. Which I've got a lot of hair. So actually, for me, it's been a joy not having to try and get it in a bun every day. And it sort of starts, it pulls your head, mine's quite heavy. At sea, sometimes I used to relax and that you have a ponytail towel and no one could see you, but it was a bun the rest of the time. Really recently, lots of the restrictions have been relaxed. And I think because, again, the Navy's becoming more modern and they realize that if you one year,

it appears twice, it's not going to necessarily make you a bad sailor. If guys want to grow a moustache, because they couldn't, the Marines could grow mustaches, the Navy could grow beards. But now we have people in the Navy with moustaches, we have marines with beards. Is that going to make them a bad Marine if they've got a beard? It's not, of course it's not. So they have really relaxed everything. And I think because the Navy's getting more multicultural,

we've got quite a lot of people from Fiji that have joined and from like St. Helena and some of the British Caribbean islands. And because of their hair, it's really hard for them to get it in a bun. So that's partly why the regs changed as well to adapt to different cultures. If I knew earlier, I'd be in the Royal Navy with my bust down 30 inches.

Yeah. Ready to do it. Yeah, but it's nice. Yeah, it's nice to know that, that literally there are people out there and I feel like we should be encouraged more people to join in, definitely. Yeah.

Would you say, so your experience of being in the Navy, is positive. When you come home, what's that like? Especially mentally, is it a massive discrepancy between life on board and then being back in like... Yeah, it really is.

And I actually really enjoyed being at city or that that said by the time I'd sort of done it, I'd had enough. But on the whole, I really enjoyed it. You know, we'd be deploying and people who'd be like, oh God, here we go six months. And I'd be like, yay! Let's go after, get the ropes off, let's get going.

But I think when I came back from Afghan and Iraq, we did them back to back. I found life really trivial at home because everything out there was so important. People being alive at the end of the day was important. I found like really trivial, you know, like paying bills and just going back to a normal mundane life. I found that hard. And I think a lot of people find the transition on board when they deploy hard, living in that environment. And then again, I don't know a lot of the wives and husbands find it hard because they've had their own space for six months.

And then the other half comes back and messes up their routine. So yeah, it's difficult for everybody. I think and I spent most of my Navy career single, which for me was a fairly conscious choice. I wanted to go away and enjoy my time rather than miss somebody all the time. So it was surprised to me when people get married young. I'm like, I just enjoy the travel and the freedom. Yeah. Because you are away quite a lot and especially some branches at engineers, warfare.

You know, you can't read radar or a sonar, shore side. You've got to be on ship for it. So they do a lot of short, they do a lot of sea time. Do you have any, like, hacks that you'd give to someone that are just joined? onto the ship to make life easier or funner? Definitely take your suitcase to your suitcase locker because otherwise you've just got this cubby hole and you're trying to wedge stuff in.

That was always a big thing. Like when you had the suitcase, you were smug. You know, take gym gear because they run circuits in the morning. The PTI on board will run circuits. And then at lunchtime and they're always quite good fun and most of the ships have got a gym on board them. Do they have planned activity nights and things like that? Occasionally, yeah, like I said, they have a barbecue.

It depends what the ships do. It depends if it's sort of, on task or it's just patrolling but you do have like barbecue nights sometimes film nights up on the flight deck and stuff like that it's nice we've got a couple of navy misconceptions here people i guess have an idea of what it's like to be on board and especially as a woman so if you can debunk them be our guest okay it's all drills making your bed and scrubbing the deck with toothbrushes well i mean how long does people think it takes to make your bed i mean if that's all you're doing all day long not going to get much done. You're expected to make your bed. But then if you're at home,

you'd be expected to make your bed. And like I said, you do have to clean the ship at sea because you need to live on a clean environment. But that's only part of your job. And when you get alongside, the cleaners come on board. And you only have to make your bed when you get out of it. Like everyone. You have to be able to swim like an Olympic athlete. Absolutely not. No. You have to be able to swim and you have to bed a treadwater for a few minutes as part of your naval swim test but there are plenty of people that struggle through it do you see sharks or anything like that do you know oh my gosh we've swam we once went through a massive massive pot of dolphins oh amazing you can't have a social life that's just the absolute opposite I mean this your social life is

part of the reason to join the armed forces I think because you have an amazing social life as soon as that ship goes alongside and do you know what was really great in the girls messes often we'd get alongside somewhere and you'd go back into the the rec room the mess and go What's the people doing and someone would go, their group's going to the shopping mall, that group's going to the beach, and we're just going to the nearest bar to have some beers. And you would just join in what someone was, whatever you wanted to do it. And I'm like, oh, can I come with the beach lot? There is a beach bar as well, right? And then that's what you would do.

And the social life is incredible and the opportunities are incredible. And you make the really good friends. So that's massively debunk that. When I first started off in the Navy, most of my friends were kind of guys. Because, like I said, I mean, back then we were four, five percent in the Navy. and when I got on my second ship the girls kind of were a bit like why don't you want to hang out with us

and I was already hanging out with the boys I work with and they were like come out with us and I was like, oh my good or nice I was like okay and then they were one of the girls I met on that ship I was out with her on Saturday night and still friends with an hour

25 years later amazing okay the next one's giving scurvy you can't eat bananas on board that's just from a very very long time ago because I think they bought disease and like chopped Like maybe spiders on board.

We definitely eat bananas on board. We eat all fruit on board. So as long as we can get it. So depending on how long you've been at sea, there is a wide range of fruit, including bananas. Great. It's just combat and war. It's really not at all.

In fact, I sort of spent 12 years practicing being at war before I actually got to do it. And a lot of, I mean, when you think about deployments as well, my first deployment was an anti-drug deployment, which we still do now. So we're out looking for drug traffickers, drug smuggling. We have anti-piracy deployments looking for, you know, anti-pirity. That was more pirate stuff off of the Gulf. So that was for a long time, the ships were doing that. At the moment, we've got our carriers that are doing world ship tours. They've been to Japan, out into Singapore, out to the Far East. So it's not that at all. The Navy's got loads of different roles. We've got

fishery protection. We've got a new survey ship that I want to call HMS Proteus. which is surveying the seabed, making sure that all our communication lines and that stay safe. So the Navy's got loads of different roles. It's not just war and combat. Did you ever see a pirate? Do you know when I was saying it, I was thinking of a proper pirate. You know, like Captain Jack Sparrow days. Yeah.

Yeah, no, I never saw any pirates of any sorts, sadly. Okay. Thank you for clearing that up. And now the next part, we've got some questions from our audience. So we've put on our Instagram story that you were coming on. How do you maintain friendship? and relationships when you're out at sea? So that is a tricky one relationship-wise,

because there's not many jobs where you go away for like six to eight months at a time. Sometimes the ships stay out on deployment even longer. So yeah, it's a challenge. It's a challenge for people to maintain relationships, which is probably why I didn't bother for a long time. But people do. They can fly them out.

Most ships will have a annual maintenance period where they'll go alongside somewhere. Dubai is quite common. Singapore, when you went to Rio, and they could fly out family and friends. When I was in France, actually, I flew home, sort of half deployment. So at least then it breaks it up. But I suppose it just depends on your relationship and how you manage it.

But yeah, I'm not saying it's easy because you don't see them for big chunks, but people do it. Are there any old superstitions that still live on Navy ships today? There was, when I joined up, it was. superstitious to have women on board ship. It was deemed bad luck. But seeing as it's been about 35 years now, and nothing catastrophic's happened. I think we can, we can bury that one now. There's lots and lots of navy slang and lots of expressions that everybody uses that come from the Navy that probably people wouldn't think of. Like when you say there's not room to swing a cat,

they don't mean a cat or nine tails. So that's the cat that they were swinging. And, and And up to scratch was the cat of nine tails being pulled through your hand. And if it scratched you, that was it was up to scratch. It was good enough. So there's loads of little things we say now that we don't even realise what they come from. And lots of them from the Navy. So we would say, do you want a gopher? And it means you don't want a drink.

Or a gopher is a wave that comes over the ship. So you come in wet. And everyone goes, what happened to you? You go, I just got a goffered. It's huge wave. It hit me as I was out there. Just loads of different things. Lunch is.

Food, scran. You come to Scran. A wet. is a cup of tea. So I could do some of people can guess what they are if you're interested. Yeah, let's see if they know.

Port and starboard scrans spanners. Port and starboard grand spanners. Spanners? Yeah. Well, if you think your scrans your food, so what do you think a port and starboard scrans spanner is? Left and right, cutlery. Cutlery.

Wow. Offit right in. Seed dust. Cedar sand Salt Oh Salt Oh of course

Oh Cedar I like that Slide That's a tricky one Slide Burger Sliders

Is it food Margarine Slide Butter Slides It slides on your bed Oh yeah I see that one

Okay Yeah Interesting You probably know deck Come on Deck Deck Not like

Anton deck No Get the deck The floor The floor Yes Yeah And the heads, do you know what the heads are?

Searles, ceilings? Toilets. Toilets. Because they used to be at the head of the ship. So they called the heads. But everybody still used it. I mean, some of them are so well used, but certainly the ones mostly used are like Scran, wet, do you want to wet, do you want a cup of tea?

I quite like wet for a cup of tea. Yeah, do you want to wet? Do you want to wet? And it's different from the armies and the rafts. So the army will say brew. Right. And they called lunch or food scoff. And we call it scoff.

Scron. Are there any inside secrets that people don't know. about the Royal Navy? I tell you what's a good thing is people don't really get qualifications in the Navy and they really encourage further learning. So if you're an engineer, for instance, once you get the level of Petty Officer, you've automatically got a qualification. As you go up each rank to leading hand in the Navy, which is the same as a corporal, and then to Petty Officer, which is like a sergeant, you do leadership courses and you gain MVQs in leadership and management, which is really good as well and every year you're given a standard learning credit and you can go and do

a little course it's 175 pounds i think it is now so whether that be like a surf qualification i did counselling level two counselling qualification for the job that i'm in now um so yeah so you can use those that's a little inside tip so another thing that grasp with your hands if you join the navy yeah those opportunities i love that what luxury item do you pack in your kit that keeps you sane You can pack quite a lot of stuff. You've got quite a lot of room. So it's not like that one desert island thing. And everyone goes, oh, I'd take some lip balm or something.

You can, you can kind of take what you want. I always love my headphones because you go to the gym. You can now there's Wi-Fi. You can lay on your bed and watch something. So I think your headphones, nowadays, a really nice feather pillow for me I'd be taken. Oh, absolutely. Because I hate a hard pillow. You know, they're rock hard and they're too big and you feel like you're lying in bed like that.

So it'd be a feather pillow with a nice silky off sand cover now. Oh, gosh. Yeah. one wrong night at this age just crap. Cramp in the morning. Do you actually have to be super fit to join the Royal Navy? No, you don't at all. I mean, I would say if you're thinking of joining,

it's ticking the box if you get your fitness up. I tease people, if you're thinking about applying, apply because when you apply, they will give you what you need to do. They did for me, this is you need to be able to run this, you need to go to do these press-ups. I was actually really fit by the time I got there because I'd had a year to train. But most people weren't, and they got fitter, lots fitter while they were there.

And again, the Navy isn't looking for crazy fit people because when you're on a warship, you're not necessarily doing a particularly arduous job. If you're a stores accountant and you're logging all the stores going in and off and ordering stores, you don't necessarily need to be super fit. So, yeah, so don't worry. Don't let that put you off.

If you could go back to your first day, what piece of advice would you give yourself? Don't take it too seriously. It's just a game to get through training. It's like you're ticking all these boxes. You know, it's not, you know, when you're getting shouted at, it's part of the process. It's not personal. Don't take it too serious.

Just take it in your stride. I know that it's for a short period. The training isn't particularly fun. But again, everybody looks back on their time in training so favourably. You know, the relationships you've built because of you in that arduous situation, it's really quite special. Yeah. In some ways, I wish I could go back and do it all again.

Really? Yeah. Oh, I love that. So what would you say to young women there's, considering joining the Navy? I would say if you're the kind of person who thinks they would enjoy the lifestyle and you can laugh at yourself and just have a go,

then definitely come and have a go because it's not for everybody, like every job, it's not for everybody. You're working with a lot of guys, that's not for everybody, but most of the people I know really enjoy it. And it's an incredible experience So even if you don't do it as long as I have,

why not come and sign on that dotted line and give it a go for a few years and have some experiences and do some travelling. So yeah, don't be afraid to try. So if people come away from this conversation, and I hope they do, and they feel inspired to look at what the Royal Navy has to offer, where can they find that information?

So all the information is online at the Royal Navy website. It's super easy. Just Google Royal Navy careers, and you will find all the information and there's like a job finder on there and stuff so you can look at what roles there are and think what most suit you. Yeah, amazing.

Well, I've thoroughly been enriched by this conversation. Honestly, coming from not knowing anything about this, thank you for being so open. And yeah, everyone, good up for Angie. Thank you very much. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Thank you very much.

You're welcome.