Are you proud of the Royal Navy heritage ?
Proud of compulsory recruitment using press-gangs ?
Proud of vicious punishments like the cat-o-9-tails ?
Proud of keel-hauling from starboard to port ?
Proud of its gunboat diplomacy to protect the heroin trade in China ?
Proud of it losing 15-20% of conscripted sailors due to scurvy ?  I doubt many officers died.
Proud of its pirate activities of stealing treasure owned by others ?
Proud of officers commissioned without naval experience ?
Proud of it transporting hundreds of thousands to a prison colony called Australia for petty misdemeanours ?

If they hadn't done the last one I would not be sitting here typing this.

And I can forgive Johnny Depp pretty much anything.

Right.  You might have been typing it anywhere between Brighton and Hove.

Given how stinking hot it is today, I'd take the switch.

Tell me about it.  My offsprings are sunburned red. Fortunately we just go red then back to White, not brown.  Once I was so badly sunburned I could barely walk for a few days.  I needed a cortizone inhection.

Harold27Z said:

Proud of it losing 15-20% of conscripted sailors due to scurvy ? 

The British had never had conscription until 1916.

Unlike our dear cousins, who seem to have been conscripting all men under the age of 40 into slave patrols as early as 1776.

You are contradicting yourself.  Most sailors had no choice. They were forced to be sailors in  the olden days.

Harold27Z said:

You are contradicting yourself.  Most sailors had no choice. They were forced to be sailors in  the olden days.

Farm labourers went down to Portsmouth, sought out the pubs where recruitment was going on, accepted drinks from the recruiters and signed up to join the Navy.

Years later a few of them came back to their villages and boasted of their adventures all over the world.

Many more jumped ship and spread the English language all over the world.

Whatever you say.

Harry maybe a racist but Berry is a liar - the British Navy press ganged their crews they were neither conscripts nor farm labourers out for a days scrumping , they were historically jumped bundled onto to boats regardless of their opinions on whether they wanted to go or not

Apparently jumping ship also spread the English language , you of course also ended hanging from the yard arm so chatting to the locals would have been short lived

It is rare to see such shit but goood to see Berry write it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressment

At the time of the Battle of Trafalgar over half the Royal Navy's 120,000 sailors were pressed men.