Second Sea Lord, Vice-Admiral Sir James Burnell-Nugent, explained the new push, saying that the Royal Navy's goal was to make all its servicemen and women feel valued.

"I am committed to ensuring the Royal Navy has a culture in which all our people are valued for themselves and are thus able to give 100 percent to their job," he said in a statement.

Navy spokesman Alan Wardle told Reuters that the Navy's decision to advertise in the gay press represented a commitment to diversity.

"If you want to have a range of people from a range of backgrounds you need to recruit from the press that they read."

Until 2000, homosexuals were banned from serving in the Royal Navy. But a European court ruling found that their exclusion was illegal, forcing the Navy to lift its gay ban.

The Royal Navy had long been the subject of rumor and inneundo, Reuters said, noting that Winston Churchill was alleged to have dismissed the force as "nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash."

In the late 1960s senior admirals announced a crackdown on gays in the service, believing at least half the fleet had "sinned homosexually," the wire service said.

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said the other main branches of the armed forces, the Army and the Royal Air Force, were also reaching out to gays and lesbians.

The RAF, he noted, had joined a Gay Pride parade last year to persuade more homosexuals to sign up.

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