Lieutenant (navy)
commissioned officer rank in many nations' navies
Lieutenant (abbreviated Lt, LT (U.S.), LT(USN), Lieut and LEUT, depending on nation) is a commissioned officer rank in many English-speaking nations' navies and coast guards. It is typically the most senior of junior officer ranks. In most navies, the rank's insignia may consist of two medium gold braid stripes, the uppermost stripe featuring an executive curl in many Commonwealth of Nations; or three stripes of equal or unequal width.
The now immediately senior rank of lieutenant commander was formerly a senior naval lieutenant rank. Many navies also use a subordinate rank of sub-lieutenant. The appointment of "first lieutenant" in many navies is held by a senior lieutenant.
This naval lieutenant ranks higher than an army lieutenants; within NATO countries the naval rank of lieutenant is a OF-2 and is the equivalent rank of an army captain. Other nations will use a naval lieutenant rank equivalent to an army lieutenant.
History
From at least 1580, the lieutenant on a ship had been the officer immediately subordinate to the captain. Before the English Restoration, lieutenants were appointed by their captains, and this inevitably led to abuses and to the widespread appointment of men of insufficient qualification.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Lieutenant (navy)” as commissioned officer rank in many nations' navies. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q457271. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1580.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lieutenant (navy)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.