When the war with France came in 1778 the mischief had been in full swing for seven years under the administration of Lord Sandwich, which began in 1771. During that period he had received for the building and equipping of the navy £6,472,072, besides large sums charged on the debt. This was nearly twice as much as had been voted between 1755 and 1762, and considerably more than a million beyond the votes of 1763 to 1771. These sums did not cover the whole expense of maintaining the navy. The supplies were voted under three heads. There was the Ordinary of the Navy, which meant the maintenance of the dockyards, care of the ships not in commission, and half pay. Then there was the Extraordinary of the navy, the “building, rebuilding, and repairs” and all “extra works over and above what was meant to be done upon the heads of wear and tear in ordinary.” The third vote was for so many men at £4 a head per month of twenty-eight days. Of this sum £1, 16s. was for wages of all ranks, 19s. for rations, and the balance covered current expenses in replacing rigging and ammunition. This was naturally the largest sum of all. The votes for 1779 for example were respectively: for the Ordinary, £369,882, 6s. 1d.; for the Extraordinary, £579,187; and for 70,000 men “for 13 months, including ordnance,” £3,640,000. The £6,472,072 supplied to Sandwich between 1771 and 1778 did not include the vote for men. Though the sum was so considerable, the Admiralty was unable to find fifty line-of-battle ships for sea in the summer of 1778.
Why so much money produced such unsatisfactory results was well shown in the course of a discussion in the Commons on the 13th January of this year. Mr. Temple Luttrell quoted figures to show that as much had been voted for the repairs of the Namur, the Defence, and the Arrogant, as would have built them new from the keel at the most extravagant rate. Yet they were not fit for service. An even more scandalous case was that of the Dragon, 74. She had been launched in 1760 in the heat of the Seven Years’ War, and was one of the vessels then hastily constructed of green timber to meet a pressing need. They were rotten by 1771, and Sandwich was in the habit of taking credit to himself for his exertion to replace them by better ships. What had happened with the Dragon was this—that between 1771 and 1778 the Admiralty came to Parliament for successive sums, amounting to £27,000, for her repairs, and £10,273 for her stores. Yet in the latter year she was notoriously lying in a rotten state at the head of Portsmouth Harbour, and not one penny of this money had ever been spent upon her. The facts were not disputed. All that the Sea Lords, who answered for the Admiralty, could say was, that they had not pilfered the money themselves, and that this sort of thing had always been done. The answer was, that it was directly contrary to the representation of the House of Commons in 1711. It was on this occasion that Burke threw the book of the estimates across the Speaker’s table, knocking over a candle, and all but breaking the shins of the Treasurer of the Navy, Welbore Ellis. He said, that it was “treating the House with the utmost contempt, to present them with a fine gilt book of estimates, calculated to the last farthing, for purposes to which the money granted was never meant to be applied.” Burke was right, but the Whig Opposition had done nothing to amend the evil in its days of power, and had little right to take a lofty moral line with its successors. Contempt was the exact word for the attitude taken towards all criticism by Sir Hugh Palliser and Lord Mulgrave, the naval representatives of the Admiralty in the Lower House. Palliser was arrogant and laconic, lying as to the state of the fleet with a burly assurance. Lord Mulgrave, the Irish peer, better remembered as the Captain Constantine Phipps, with whom Nelson made his early voyage to Spitzbergen, was fluent, jocular, and insolent. A docile majority supported them by voting “the previous question” as the most convenient way of stifling inquiry.
Indignant contemporary critics declared that accounts made in this fashion were in fact deliberately designed to “envelope in utter darkness the true appropriation of the immense sums they (the Ministers to wit) extort thereupon from the public.” The respective shares of deliberate design and mere convenient use and wont in producing the disorder present a nice question. What is beyond dispute is, that when the gilt book of the estimates showed the expenditure of such and such sums for repairs and stores, and when the money was devoted to other purposes, and the vessels named were lying rotten and unfit for sea, it must have been impossible even for the best informed officials to know the effective strength of the navy. Indeed, nothing is more difficult than to find what was the real available force of the fleet at this crisis. The common printed authorities, Beatson’s Naval and Military Memoirs, Schomberg’s Chronicle, and Derrick’s Memoirs of the Royal Navy (all good books in their different ways), contradict one another. It is only natural they should, for there were no accurate sources of information. It was not till 1773 that the Admiralty itself began to try to take stock of its vessels. In that year it was ordered that a return, to be known as the “Progress of the Dockyards,” should be made every week, showing what ships of all classes were under the care of the officials. There was also a monthly list of ships in full sea pay. It ought to have been possible to make an exact return of the strength of the navy by adding the one to the other. But these papers were avowedly untrustworthy. A ship in full sea pay, or commission, might go into the dockyard for repairs. She would then appear in the Weekly Progresses, and if the totals alone were looked to, she would be counted twice. Then a vessel was considered to be in full sea pay when her captain was appointed, but months might pass before he joined her, and in the meantime she lay unmanned. So she, again, would be included twice. The Weekly Progresses were drawn up by the clerks of the Navy Office, and the monthly lists by the Admiralty officials. They were independent and might not agree. Some allowance must be made for mere blunders. It is obvious, too, that the dockyards returned such rotten hulks as H.M.S. Dragon among the ships under their charge, while the fact that a man-of-war was in full sea pay hardly established a presumption that she was manned, rigged, or as much as in good repair. These official papers are therefore but blind guides. When the great reform of the navy administration was begun in the early years of the nineteenth century, a manuscript book called the “Progress of the Navy from 1765 to 1806” was compiled in the Admiralty. The author warns all who may use it that his sources were untrustworthy, but he professes to have done his best to get at the truth and to have made the necessary deductions. It may be accepted as giving the nearest attainable approach to an exact statement of the paper strength of the navy during the years which it covers.
According to this authority, the total nominal force of the Royal Navy in January 1778 was 399 vessels, of which 274 were in full sea pay, or commission, while 125 were in ordinary, or reserve. The usual phrase of the time was “lying by the walls”—that is to say, in the dockyards. The advance during the war will be seen from the following list:—
| Vessels in Full Sea Pay. | Total of all Vessels. | |
| 1st January 1778 | 274 | 399 |
| 〃 〃 1779 | 317 | 432 |
| 〃 〃 1780 | 364 | 481 |
| 〃 〃 1781 | 396 | 538 |
| 〃 〃 1782 | 398 | 551 |
| 〃 〃 1783 | 430 | 608 |
This, however, is paper strength. It includes battered hulks fit only for harbour duty, prizes needing a refit, yachts and ships building. Even at the very end of the war such authorities as Keppel and Howe could not agree as to the number of vessels really available for service. Ships were put into commission simply in order to please supporters by conferring professional favours on them, their relations, or clients. A great display of pennants might be made by this device, but it was a show out of all proportion to the effective strength. Then, as in much later times, it was the dishonest official practice to include vessels building in the list of the navy. Thus, in the last year of the war, it was said that we had four first-rates of 100 guns. In reality there had been three, which were reduced to two by the sinking of the Royal George at Spithead. Another was ordered to replace her, and a fourth, the Queen Charlotte, which afterwards carried Howe’s flag on the 1st June, was also begun. They were not ready for years, but they were counted in to make up the tale of four.
Where our evidence is confessedly not sound, it is idle to make confident assertions about the strength of the fleet. But the sea pay lists represent what was the utmost claimed by the Government as ready for immediate service. The figures for the beginning and the end of 1778 will show what was the disposition of the fleet, and also what was the first effect of the outbreak of hostilities with France.
| January 1778. | December 1778. | |||
| Station. | Number. | Station. | Number. | |
| East Indies | 6 | East Indies | 5 | |
| Jamaica | 22 | Jamaica | 21 | |
| Leeward Islands. | 19 | Leeward Islands | 10 | |
| North America | 92 | North America | 85 | |
| Mediterranean | 6 | Mediterranean | 5 | |
| Newfoundland | 13 | Newfoundland | 15 | |
| Convoy and Cruising | 22 | Convoy and Cruising | 36 | |
| Ships at home | 94 | Ships at home | 97 | |
| —— | Western Squadron | 43 | ||
| 274 | —— | |||
| 317 | ||||
The difference between the two lists is partly accounted for by transfer of vessels from one station, or duty, to another. The high figure of the North American station came from the use of numbers of small craft to co-operate with the troops employed against the insurgents from 1775 onwards. In the main, however, the second list differs from the first by the addition of the Western Squadron—that is, the great force of battleships collected under Keppel to meet the French at Brest.
It will be seen that there is an increase in the vessels employed on “Convoy and Cruising.” We tell only half the service of a navy in war when we confine ourselves to the movements of the squadrons and the battles. The other half consists in the patrol duty done to protect trade and keep down the enemy’s attacks on commerce. To explain it by narrative would be tedious and confusing to the reader, but the following list of the warships of various classes employed in this way at and about home when the war began will help the reader to realise how the duty was provided for:—