Steve Thorpe – Being a Warrant Officer

Simon: And what is the role of a Warrant Officer as the difference?

So, you’re the top of the Non-Commissioned Officers as a Warrant Officer. You have quite a lot of authority over Officers, all the Chiefs, all the POs.

A lot of Officers will look to you as the subject matter expert and having all the knowledge, so you can be a Chief one day, and a Warrant Officer the next day, but people treat you completely differently the next day because you’re a Warrant Officer, which is good you know?

Simon: Treat you … how does it differ?

A lot more respect, so you are like the top of your tree if you like. In the Coxswain world, I think there were only 12 Warrant Officers in the Navy, so you are quite well-known and respected because of what you’ve done. And doing sea riding you get to know all the submarine Captains and all XOs.

You look at how the routines are running onboard the platform. Give feed-back into the Coxswain and to the XO and to the Captain, so you are really well known throughout the Submarine Flotilla because of that because there’s only one Coxswain that rides a boat with 12 other sea riders to put events on, so that was a really good job.