to subordinate the members of the board of admiralty more effectually to the first lord, constituting him in effect minister of marine; and to render departmental officers at once more individually responsible and more intimate with the controlling members of the board. He increased the power and functions of the controller of the navy, giving him a seat at the board, and charging him with the stock-keeping attributes of the storekeeper-general, whose purchasing functions were transferred to a new officer—the superintendent of contracts, the head of the contract and purchase department, and his accounting functions to the accountant-general. The office of store keeper-general was abolished. The office of comptroller of victualling was also abolished—the storekeeping functions being transferred to a new officer, the superintendent of victualling—the purchasing function to the head of the purchase department, the accounts to the accountant-general. The other officers remained; but in the case of each this modification of business ensued, viz., that all stores whatever required by any of them were to be obtained through the agency of one supply or purchase department; that all accounts whatever were to be rendered to the accountant-general. The departmental officers of the admiralty at the present time (1874) are—the controller of the navy, without a seat at the board (who has on his staff a chief naval architect, a chief engineer, a surveyor of dockyards, a superintendent of naval stores, and a director of ordnance)—the directorgeneral of the medical department, the director of works, the director of transports, the hydrographer, the superintendent of contracts, the superintendent of victualling. The department of the two permanent secre taries of the admiralty (one a naval officer, the other a civilian) undertakes the conduct of all business relating to the personnel of the navy and the ordering of the fleets.
To control the departmental officers, and to advise the responsible first lord, there are the following members of the board of admiralty, viz., the parliamentary or finan cial secretary, who has oversight of all business relating to finance, estimates, expenditure, and accounts, and who is the alter ego of the first lord in Parliament; the first naval lord, who, assisted by two other naval "lords," takes oversight of the personnel and of all executive functions of the fleet; and a civilian lord, who assists the financial secretary, and has particular oversight also of naval civil establishments and of the works department.
A list of secretaries of the admiralty from 1684 to the present time is given below:—
FIRST SECRETARIES TO THE ADMIRALTY.
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As regards the navies of foreign countries, their government is in the hands of ministers or departments variously constituted. The Russian Admiralty is a highly-organised bureau, divided into departments after the English manner, and under the supreme control of a high admiral, usually a Grand Duke of the Imperial House. The German Admiralty was, till 1872, a branch of the War Office, though governed by a vice-admiral under a naval prince of the reigning family. In 1872 it was severed from the War Office, though remaining an appanage thereof, and a general of the army was placed at its head. The French minister of marine, assisted by a permanent staff, controls the navy of France on a highly centralised system of administration; but the departments are well organised, and work well. The Italian fleet is governed on principles analogous to the French, but with a large admixture of the English representative element. The American navy is governed by a secretary of the navy, a cabinet minister, to whom the departmental heads are responsible, and under whose orders they work.
(F. W. R.)
Admiralty, High Court of. This is a court of law, in which the authority of the lord high admiral is exercised in his judicial capacity. Very little has been left on record of the ancient prerogative of the admirals of England. For some time after the first institution of the office they judged all matters relating to merchants and mariners, which happened on the main sea, in a summary way, according to the laws of Oleron (so called because promulgated by Richard I. at that place). These laws, which were little more than a transcript of the Rhodian laws, became the universally-received customs of the western part of the world. "All the seafaring nations," says Sir Leoline Jenkins, "soon after their promulgation, received and entertained these laws from the English, by way of deference to the sovereignty of our kings in the British ocean, and to the judgment of our countrymen in sea affairs."