administration being conducted under the navy and victualling boards apart from, but yet subject to, the admiralty itself. This was a system which continued during the time of all the great wars, and was not abolished until 1832, when Sir James Graham, by his reforms, put an end to what appeared a divided control. Whatever may have been the demerits of that system, it sufficed to maintain the navy in the time of its greatest achievements, and through all the wars which were waged with the Spaniards, the Dutch and the French. The original authority for the present constitution of the Admiralty Board is found in a declaratory act (Admiralty Act 1690), in which it is enacted that “all and singular authorities, jurisdictions and powers which, by act of parliament or otherwise, had been lawfully vested” in the lord high admiral of England had always appertained, and did and should appertain, to the commissioners for executing the office for the time being “to all intents and purposes as if the said commissioners were lord high admiral of England.” The admiralty commission was dissolved in 1701, and reconstituted on the death of Prince George of Denmark, lord high admiral in 1709. From that time forward, save for a short period in 1827–1828, when the duke of Clarence was lord high admiral, the office has remained in commission.
A number of changes have been made since the amalgamation of the admiralty and the Navy Board by Sir James Graham in 1832 (see Navy, History), but the general principle remains the same, and the constitution of the Admiralty Board and civil departments is described below. The Board consists of the first lord and four naval lords with a civil lord, who in theory are jointly responsible, and are accustomed to meet sometimes daily, but at all times frequently; and the system developed provides for the subdivision of labour, and yet for the co-ordinated exertion of effort. The system has worked well in practice, and has certainly won the approval and the admiration of many statesmen. Lord George Hamilton said, before the Royal Commission on Civil Establishments, 1887, that “It has this advantage, that you have all departments represented round a table, and that if it is necessary to take quick action, you can do in a few minutes that which it would take hours under another system to do”; and the report of the Royal Commission of 1889 remarked that “The constitution of the Board of Admiralty appears to us well designed, and to be placed under present regulations on a satisfactory footing.”
The special characteristics of the Admiralty Board which have been described are accompanied by a very peculiar and noteworthy feature, which is not without relation to the untrammelled and undefined operations of the admiralty. This feature arises from the discrepancy between the admiralty patent and the orders in council, for Powers.the admiralty is not administered according to the terms of the patent which invests it with authority, and its operations raise a singular point in constitutional law.
The legal origin of the powers exercised by the first lord and the Board itself is indeed curiously obscure. Under the patent the full power and authority are conferred upon “any two or more” of the commissioners, though, in the patent of Queen Anne, the grant was to “any three or more of you.” It was under the Admiralty Act 1832 that two lords received the necessary authority to legalize any action of the Board; but already, under an act of 1822, two lords had been empowered to sign so long as the Board consisted of six members. We therefore find that the legal authority of the Board under the patent is vested in the Board; but in the order in council of the 14th of January 1869 the sole responsibility of the first lord was officially laid down, and in the order in council of the 19th of March 1872 the first lord was made “responsible to your Majesty and to parliament for all the business of the admiralty.” As a matter of fact, the authority of the first lord, independent of his colleagues, had existed in an undefined manner from ancient times. Before a select committee of the House of Commons in 1861 the duke of Somerset stated that he considered the first lord responsible, that he had always “acted under that impression,” and that he believed “all former first lords were of this opinion”; while Sir James Graham said that “the Board of Admiralty could never work, whatever the patent might be, unless the first lord were supreme, and did exercise constantly supreme and controlling authority.” It is not, therefore, surprising to find that there has been undoubtedly direct government without a Board. Thus, in the operations conducted against the French channel ports in 1803–1804, Lord Melville, then first lord, took steps of great importance without the knowledge of his colleagues, though he afterwards bowed to their views, which did not coincide with his own. Again, when Lord Gambier was sent to Copenhagen in 1807, he was instructed to obey all orders from the king, through the principal secretary of state for war, and in this way received orders to attack Copenhagen, which were unknown to all but the first lord. In a similar way the secretary of the admiralty was despatched to Paris in 1815 with instructions to issue orders as if from the Board of Admiralty when directed to do so by the foreign secretary who accompanied him, and these orders resulted in Napoleon’s capture. These instances were cited, except the first of them, by Sir James Graham before the select committee of the House of Commons in 1861, in order to illustrate the elastic powers under the patent which enabled the first lord to take immediate action in matters that concerned the public safety. It is not surprising that this peculiar feature of admiralty administration should have attracted adverse criticism, and have led some minds to regard the Board as “a fiction not worth keeping up.”
Between 1860 and 1870 the sittings of the Board ceased to have the effective character they had once possessed. During the administration of Mr Childers,[1] first lord from 1868 to 1871 in Mr Gladstone’s cabinet, a new system was introduced by which the free intercommunication of the members of the Board was hampered, and its sittings were quite discontinued. The case of the “Captain” led, however, to a return to the older practice. The “Captain” was a low freeboard masted turret ship, designed by Captain Cowper Phipps Coles, R.N. Competent critics believed that she would be unsafe, and said so before she was built; but the admiralty of Lord Derby’s cabinet of 1866 gave their consent to her construction. She was commissioned early in 1870, and capsized in the Bay of Biscay on the 7th of September of that year. Mr Childers, who was nominally responsible for allowing her to be commissioned, distributed blame right and left, largely upon men who had not approved of the ship at all, and had been exonerated from all share of responsibility for allowing her to be built. The disaster was justly held to show that a civilian first lord cannot dispense with the advantage of constant communication with his professional advisers. When Mr Childers retired from the admiralty in March 1871, his successor, Mr Goschen (Viscount Goschen), reverted to the original system. It cannot be said, however, that the question of ultimate responsibility is well defined. The duke of Somerset, Sir James Graham and Sir Charles Wood, afterwards Lord Halifax, held the view that the first lord was singly and personally responsible for the sufficiency of the fleet. Sir Arthur Hood expressed before the House of Commons committee in 1888 the view that the Board collectively were responsible; whilst Sir Anthony Hoskins assigned the responsibility to the first lord alone with certain qualifications, which is a just and reasonable view.
2. Admiralty Organization.—Under the organization which now exists, the Board of Admiralty consists of the first lord, the first and second naval lords, the additional naval lord and controller, the junior naval lord and the civil lord, who are commissioners for executing the office of lord high admiral, and with them are the parliamentary and financial secretary and the permanent secretary. As has been explained, the first lord is responsible under the orders in council to the crown and to parliament for all admiralty business. In the hands of the
- ↑ Admiral Sir Cooper Key, when director of naval ordnance during Mr Childers’ administration, observed to the writer that no first lord of the admiralty knew so little of the working of the admiralty as Mr Childers, because, owing to the discontinuance of board meetings, he lost the great advantage of hearing the discussion. (r. v. h.)
