empire]
ADMIRALTY
ADMINISTRATION
the select committee on the navy estimates, 1888, “are matters for the Cabinet to determine.” “ Expense,” said Sir Anthony Hoskins, “governs everything.” The needs of the empire and financial considerations, as it is scarcely necessary to remark, may prove to be antithetical conditions governing the same problem, and in practice it follows that the Admiralty Board directs its operations in accordance with the views of the Government, but limited by the public funds which are known to be available. Such considerations suggest a practical limitation of responsibility, so far as the several Lords of the Admiralty are concerned, but it may be presumed to be their duty individually or collectively to place their views before the First Lord; and Lord George Hamilton told the select committee of 1888 that, if his colleagues should represent to him that a certain expenditure was indispensable for the efficiency of the service, he would recognize that all financial considerations should be put on one side. The commissioners reported that this was the only commonsense view of the matter, and that it was difficult to see on what other footing the control of navy expenditure, consistently with responsibility to Parliament, could be placed. Two practical considerations are bound up with the shipbuilding programme—the carrying forward of the work in hand and the new construction to be begun, since it is absolutely necessary that proper provision should be made for the employment and distribution of labour in the dockyards, and for the purchase of necessary materials. Through the director of naval construction and the director of dockyards, the Controller is kept informed as to the progress of work and the amount of labour required, as also in regard to the building facilities of the yards. These matters, in a general way, must form a subject of discussion between the first Naval Lord and the Controller, who will report on the subject to the First Lord. The accountant-general, as the financial officer of the Board, will be called upon to place the proposed estimates upon a financial basis, and when the views of the Cabinet are known as to the amount of money available, the several departments charged with the duty of preparing the various votes will proceed with that work. The financial basis alluded to is, of course, found in the estimates of the previous year, modified by the new conditions that arise. There has been in past times a haphazard character in our shipbuilding programmes, but with the introduction of the Naval Defence Act of 1889, which looked ahead and was not content with hand-tomouth provision, a better state of things has grown up, and, with a larger sense of responsibility, a policy characterized by something of continuity has been developed. Certainly the largest factor in the better state of things has been the growth of a strong body of public opinion as to the supreme value of the navy for national and imperial welfare. No Government could have carried forward the great- work which has been accomplished for the British navy within the last ten years without the impulsion and the support of public opinion. Another important and related matter that comes before the Board of Admiralty is the character and design of ships. The naval members of the Board indicate the classes and qualities desired, and it is the practice that the sketch-design, presented in accordance with the instructions, is fully discussed by the first Naval Lord and the Controller and afterwards by the Board. The design then takes further shape, and when it has received the final sanction of the Board it cannot be altered without the sanction of the same authority. A similar procedure is found in the other business of the Admiralty Board, such as shoreworks, docks, and the preparation of offensive and defensive plans of warfare—the last being a very important
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matter that falls into the operations of the Naval Intelligence Department, which has been described, though not with perfect accuracy, and certainly in no large sense, as “ the brain of the navy.” That department is under the direction of the first Naval Lord. The shipbuilding programme may be described as the corner-stone of the executive business of the Admiralty, because upon it depends very largely the preparation of all the other votes relating to numbers, stores, victualling, clothing, &C. But if the Admiralty Board is responsible through the First Lord for the preparation of the estimates, it is also charged with the business of supervising expenditure. In this matter the financial secretary plays a large part, and is directed to assist the spending department of the Admiralty in their duty of watching the progress of their liabilities and disbursements. Some notes on Admiralty finance will be found below (parts iv., vii.). The shipbuilding votes set the larger machinery of the Admiralty in motion. The executive departments, except in regard to the hulls and machinery of ships and the special requirements of the director of works, do not make purchases of stores, that work resting with the director of navy contracts. Most of the important executive and spending branches are in the department of the Controller, and it will be well, while we are dealing with the material side of the navy, to describe briefly their character and duties. The civil branches of the navy tributary to the Controller are those of the director of naval construction, the engineer-in-chief, the directors of naval ordnance, of dockyards, and of stores, and the inspector of dockyard expense accounts. The first duty of the Controller is, as has been explained, in relation to the design and construction of ships and their machinery, and the executive officials who have charge of that work are the director of naval construction and the engineer-in-chief, whose operations are closely inter-related. A vast administrative stride has been made in this particular branch of the Admiralty. The work of design and construction now go forward together, and the Admiralty designers are in close touch with the work in hand at the dockyards—a condition which did not exist twenty-five years ago. This has been largely brought about by the institution, in 1888, of the royal corps of naval constructors, whose members interchange their duties between the designing of ships at the Admiralty and practical work at the dockyards. It is through the director of naval construction that many of the spending departments are set in motion, since he j8 responsible both for the design of ships and for their construction. It deserves to be noticed, however, that a certain obscurity exists in regard to the relative duties of the director of naval construction and the director of dockyards touching constructive works in the yards. The former officer has also charge of all the work given out to contract, though it is the business of the dockyard officials to certify that the conditions of the contract have been fulfilled. In all this work the director of naval construction collaborates with the engineer-inchief, who is an independent officer and not a subordinate, and whose procedure in regard to machinery closely resembles that adopted in the matter of contract-built ships. The director of naval ordnance is another officer of the Controller’s Department whose operations are very closely related to the duties of the director of naval construction, and the relation is both intimate and sustained, for in the Ordnance Department everything that relates to guns, gunmountings, magazines, torpedo apparatus, electrical fittings for guns, and other electrical fittings is centred. A singular feature of this branch of administration is that the navy long since lost direct control of ordnance matters,
