#I'm Scottish myself and your comment about our noble tongue being 'its own beast' is absolutely delightful to me! :D

[saints-who-never-existed]

This is such an interesting question that I've pondered many times myself! I'm always fascinated by the potential influence that accents and geographical origins can have on character and narrative in general.

Tozer is an excellent example so I'm glad you mentioned him.

In real life, he came originally from Somerset in the West Country which has its own distinct and lovely accent. In the book, as most other working-class characters do, he speaks like a plucky Dickensian orphan (don't even get me started on that particular choice!). And of course in the show, he has a Scouse accent because David Walmsley happens to have a Scouse accent.

All of those men - the Southerner, the Scouser and the Somerset lad- would see and move through the world differently based on where they happened to grow up within it and that idea just fascinates me!

In answer to your questions:

Accents in the UK today are still often very strong and distinct, generally speaking. Where I'm from, you can often hear clear differences in speech from people who live in towns only a few miles apart.

I imagine that these differences may well have been even stronger back in the day when it would've been much more common for people, especially poorer people, to live all their lives in the town where they were born/their local area.

But, then again, that is less likely to have been the case, I think, for sailors and other professions who had reason to travel more widely.

To the best of my knowledge, there wouldn't have been a 'widespread "working class" accent/dialect' in the way you describe but I do expect there would've been a certain softening and flattening out of individual accents happening in that sort of environment. A ship wouldn't be able to function very well, after all, if the men aboard her couldn't find a way to communicate clearly with each other, to make themselves understood and to understand others in turn.

Thinking thoughts about Tozers thick accent and by extent asked myself: Was it a thing back in Victorian England that regional accents/dialects were so pronounced that you couldn't understand one another? I mean Scottish always has been it's own beast I guess but apart from that?

I know that up until WW2 regional accents/dialects in Germany were VERY distinct, you had to learn "high german" (modern standard german) at school, your dialect WAS your mother tongue (I mean southern dialects are still a big deal today, if you go to the rural areas dont ask me what they're saying bc I have no idea that's between them and god)

So was it really like,, 130 men crammed together on a ship barely being able to understand one another or was there more of a widespread "working class" accent/dialect being spoken that ppl learned over time? I mean ofc they could understand commands and ship lingo but the rest??