Plucky Middie: Difference between revisions

The word "midshipman" derives from the term "amidships", referring to the portion of the ship in which they lived and slept. During the 19th century training of naval officers in both the Royal Navy and the U.S. Navy changed toward formal schooling in a naval college as opposed to an apprenticeship aboard ships, and the term "midshipman" changed to indicate an officer cadet.

 

 

The trope is perhaps the result of exaggeration by Victorian authors, who knew of course that a large part of their audience would be teenage boys who sucked up naval adventure stories as quickly as they could. This is likely the reason for a lot of romanticized portrayals of [[Child Soldiers]] in general.

* [[Leviathan|Deryn Sharp]] loves [[Sweet Polly Oliver|her]] ship very much. Unlike most middies, [[Living Ship|her]] [[Space Whale|ship]] [[Organic Technology|might]] [[Sapient Ship|love]] [[A Boy and His X|her]] back.

* Mostly averted in the [[Bloody Jack]] series. Since the first book focuses on the Ships' Boys, the Middies are more a foil for the bravery and wit of the protagonists. One of the Middies is a violent bully who targets our protagonist, as well as the other Midshipmen. One of the other Middies more of less earns the epithet 'plucky' after Jacky fires him up with pep talk and teaches him to fight dirty, and he eventually takes on his bullying shipmate in a fair fistfight. Since the place of 'plucky child crew-members' is being occupied in the story by the Boys, the Middies don't get story action besides this. However, since the best of the Boys are promoted to Midshipman rank by the end of the book, they they themselves eventually qualify for this trope.

* Played with in the [[Aubrey-Maturin]] saga. Some of the middies start out inexperienced, but prove themselves and rise up the chain of command, as in the cases of Pullings, Babbington and Mowett. Others, like Blakeney, are more known for causing trouble such as swallowing the ship's grapeshot.

== [[Film]] ==

 

== Live Action TV ==

** Also Nog in [[Deep Space 9]]

* [[Horatio Hornblower]], as mentioned above, includes a few of these, though Horatio himself is unusually old to be a midshipman. In the third series, notably, the Hotspur has two midshipmen, the capable Orrock, who plays this straight, and Hammond, an aversion, being rather incompetent. {{spoiler|Orrock survives, but Hammond is shot and dies after one episode. It's pretty much stated that his motivation for joining the Navy is purely familial, and his admiration of Hornblower prompted him to serve on the Hotspur.}}

* [[The King's Speech|George VI]] was this during [[World War I]]. He was promoted Sublieutenant in time to serve at the Battle of Jutland.

* Several famous naval officers had once been this, naturally enough.

** Another dark side is what happened to Middies who ''weren't'' sufficiently plucky. Sent home in disgrace if they were lucky, marooned overseas or worse if they weren't.