An unpublished cartoon, but recycled from this website in July 2010.

‘Middie’ was short for midshipman, the young officers, many of whom found themselves very unhappy at sea at first.  They were usually just about in their teens, away from their Mums for the first time and often treated harshly by older midshipmen (getting their turn to do the bad things that others had done to them – kids! Tut!).  Older middies could well be in their thirties, and often then bitter about being unable to pass for a lieutenant.  In reality the ‘young gentlemen’, as they were known, rarely resorted to the solution mentioned in this cartoon strip.