Rear admiral (Royal Navy)
flag officer rank of the British Royal Navy
Rear admiral (RAdm) is a flag officer rank of the Royal Navy. It is immediately superior to commodore and is subordinate to vice admiral. It is a two-star rank and has a NATO ranking code of OF-7.
The equivalent rank in the British Army and Royal Marines is major-general; and in the Royal Air Force it is air vice-marshal.
History
The rank originated in the 17th century, in the days of naval sailing squadrons when each naval squadron would be assigned an admiral as its head. The admiral would command from the centre vessel and direct the activities of the squadron.
The admiral would in turn be assisted by a vice admiral, who commanded the lead ships which would bear the brunt of a naval battle. In the rear of the naval squadron, a third admiral would command the remaining ships and, as this section of the squadron was considered to be in the least danger, the admiral in command of the rear would typically be the most junior of the squadron admirals. This has survived into the modern age, with the rank of rear admiral the most junior of the admiralty ranks of many navies.
Prior to 1864 the Royal Navy was divided into coloured squadrons which determined career path.
“Rear admiral (Royal Navy)” enters the record as flag officer rank of the British Royal Navy. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Rear, admiral and Royal can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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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 Sep 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q15615347. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1864.
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This entry incorporates text from “Rear admiral (Royal 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.