How did a person become an officer in the British Navy around the era of the Napoleonic wars?

Hi there, I've answered a couple questions on this topic before:

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2b42u0/during_the_napoleonic_wars_how_young_were_naval/

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/29f3s7/how_does_the_royal_navys_organisation_command/

To quote myself from that first answer:

To become an officer in the Napoleonic period, a man would need to have entered the navy at a suitable age (certainly no older than 14) to build up enough sea time and practical experience to pass a lieutenant's examination, which required that the examining board be presented with evidence that he had spent six years at sea (at least two of them in the Navy) and that he "appeared" to be 20 years old, which was the minimum age to become a lieutenant. And yes, the point of boys going to sea that young was eventually to attain commissioned rank.

In the period of the Napoleonic wars, many boys went to sea as young as 11 or 12 to start building up the required sea time, or were at least put on ship's books by captains who were friends or relatives of their families to start building up the required sea time. It wasn't uncommon for boys to be placed on the books even earlier, and this practice (though technically illegal) was viewed with some benevolence, because as navigation (particularly finding longitude) became more complicated, most boys needed a few years of schooling ashore, particularly in mathematics. Once a midshipman had built up the required sea time, he would have to sit for a lieutenant's examination in front of a panel of captains, where he would be grilled on practical seamanship, navigation, mathematics, geography, history or really anything else the board wanted to throw at him. There wasn't a standard examination, so it was quite possible that sympathetic boards could pass men rather easily (Horatio Nelson's stepson rather famously became a lieutenant at around 16 and a post-captain at 17, due to Nelson's intervention and "interest" in his future, despite being spectacularly unqualified for the job).

Once a man became a lieutenant, he would have to rely on luck and his own "interest" from sponsors for further promotion. The first lieutenant of a ship was often promoted after a successful action (this was seen as a compliment to his captain, oddly enough). A lieutenant's next step would be as a master and commander of a vessel; he would by courtesy be called a captain at that point, but it wasn't until he was promoted to captain of a post-ship that he would be called a post-captain, or just captain, and be assured of (if he lived long enough) dying an admiral. Once a man was a post-captain, his further promotion was entirely based on seniority on the list of captains. (What's a post-ship? In confusing logic, a post-ship is what a post-captain would command. In practical terms, it usually meant at least a frigate, although sometimes smaller ships were considered post-ships out of courtesy to a captain.)

So yes, it was common for boys to be midshipmen in the navy of the time. They could even command prizes and other ships (certainly with the strong help of an experienced warrant officer and other seamen) as part of their training, or command a ship's boat in a landing or cutting-out expedition. Many were killed or wounded in battle.

And on education, from a different answer:

Starting roughly in the 1760s, the way in which men became officers in the Navy became more regularized than it had been before. In general, there had always been a boom-and-bust cycle in manning the commissioned ranks, in which large numbers of new officers were commissioned during wartime only to be thrown on the beach in peacetime. This led to absurdities like 40-year-old masters' mates (midshipmen) serving with 12- and 13-year-olds, but there was no good solution to this when seniority was the main way of gaining promotion. Once a man had made post-captain, he was essentially assured of eventually becoming an admiral, barring death or gross misconduct, but officers before reaching that step would not have any guarantee of promotion. Many of these disappointed officers served in the merchant navy, East India company, or other navies (navies of other powers). The creation of the navy's Transport Service also offered some honorable employment for officers who had a great deal of sea time, with a moderate hope of promotion.

The "discovery of the longitude" in the 1760s meant that mathematics became a bigger part of a sea officer's education. The invention of the chronometer offered a simple and reliable way for officers to tell the ship's longitude (by its deviation at local noon from Greenwich time), but very few ships had Admiralty-supplied chronometers until the 1840s. That meant that lunar observations were the most common way of finding out a ship's east-west position in the ocean, and those required a finer understanding of mathematics than had been required before. The need for mathematics also coincided with the fact that many boys who went to sea had little formal schooling to lead to a process in which boys going to sea would often spend some fictional "sea time" on the books of a ship while actually at a primary school on land. This was theoretically a crime, as the ship's purser would be paid for the rations drawn by the nonexistent people on the ship's books, but it was understood as a necessary minor offense to allow boys to get some education other than that at sea.

So the typical future sea-officer might be entered on a ship's books at 12 or 13 while getting some education on land and not join the ship until 15 or so, while they would "learn the ropes" in a professional manner. The nascent officer would take an examination to become a lieutenant, in which he had to offer journals of his sea-service and answer questions from an examining board. If he passed, he would be on the promotion ladder and largely dependent on patronage/luck for his career.

During the 16th century in general, naval ranks became more specialized. While navies of the Armada, for example, often mixed command among soldiers and sailors with the "master" responsible for navigation regardless of who commanded, the naval ranks were becoming more regularized. The most obvious example of this was a sharp line between commissioned and warrant officers. Warrant officers were those men such as the boatswain, the surgeon, the carpenter, the gunner, the purser and their attendant mates, as well as the master, who as the WO in charge of navigation and sailing had a somewhat exalted role among the warrant officers. The status of warrant officers got a boost in 1787 when they were granted official uniforms, but there was always a divide among warrant officers who were essentially gentlemen at sea (surgeons, pursers, chaplains) versus boatswains, gunners, carpenters and others who were usually former common seamen.

Please let me know if that answers your question or if there's more that you would be interested in knowing. You can also find some book suggestions on my user profile:

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/profiles/jschooltiger