The Wrens were formed in 1917 during the First World War. On 10 October 1918, nineteen-year-old Josephine Carr from Cork, became the first Wren to die on active service, when her ship, the RMS Leinster was torpedoed. By the end of the war the WRNS had 5,500 members, 500 of them officers. In addition, about 2,000 members of the WRAF had previously served with the WRNS supporting the Royal Naval Air Service and were transferred on the creation of the Royal Air Force. It was disbanded in 1919. The WRNS was revived in 1939 at the beginning of the Second World War, with an expanded list of allowable activities, including flying transport planes. At its peak in 1944 it had 75,000 active servicewomen. During the war there were 100 deaths. One of the slogans used in recruiting posters was "Join the Wrens—free a man for the fleet." The WRNS remained in existence after the end of the war. In the 1970s it became obvious that equal pay for women and the need to remove sexual discrimination meant that the WRNS and the Royal Navy would become one organisation. The key change was that women would become subject to the Naval Discipline Act 1957. Vonla McBride, who had experience in human resource management, became the Director of the WRNS in 1976, and members of the WRNS were subject to the same discipline as men by the next year. In October 1990, during the Gulf War, HMS Brilliant carried the first women officially to serve on an operational warship. That same year, Chief Officer Pippa Duncan became the first WRNS officer to command a Royal Navy shore establishment. The WRNS was finally integrated into the Royal Navy in 1993, when women were allowed to serve on board navy vessels as full members of the crew. Female sailors are still informally known by the nicknames "wrens" or "Jennies" in naval slang. Before 1993, all women in the Royal Navy were members of the WRNS except nurses, who joined Queen Alexandra's Royal Naval Nursing Service, and medical and dental officers, who were commissioned directly into the Royal Navy, held RN ranks, and wore WRNS uniform with gold RN insignia.
Ranks and uniform
The WRNS had its own ranking system, which it retained until amalgamation into the Royal Navy in 1993.
Officers
Enlisted
Ratings' titles were suffixed with their trade. Wrens wore the same rank insignia as their male equivalents, but in blue instead of gold. The "curls" atop officers' rank stripes were diamond-shaped instead of circular. From 1939, Wren uniform consisted of a double-breasted jacket and skirt, with shirt and tie, for all ranks. Junior Ratings wore hats similar to those of their male counterparts. Senior Ratings and officers wore tricorne hats with a white cover. All insignia, including cap badges and non-substantive badges, were blue.
