Jack,
Reverting to your #8684,
...Danny - I'm still chuckling at "they tended to vanish in a cloud of orange blossom"...
leads me to wonder whether you had similar problems with your WRNS (Mrs D. was a WREN for a period postwar, but that was long before I came on the scene).
I have always been amazed at the decision to allow WRNS to go to sea as part of a ship's company. At one stroke their Lordships must have put the teeth on edge of every Naval Wife. These had long been resigned to having their husbands disappear for months at a time, secure in the knowledge that they were safe from the (conventional) temptations of the flesh while boxed up in a floating steel monastery; now all that was at hazard.
No doubt the WRENs enjoyed it (and EQUALIY had been achieved !), but had I been the First Sea Lord (which, having regard to the safety of the Realm, thank the Lord I'm not, Sir), a wicked grin would have appeared on my weatherbeaten cheeks.
Why not select one frigate or corvette, and crew it with only females (from Captain to ship's cat) ? How popular would service in such a floating nunnery be ? Then we would see what the real draw was: Life on the Open Wave - or Jolly Jack Tar ?
Danny.