The Administration:—The Navy Commissioners.
The brunt of administrative work and responsibility fell, however, on the Navy Commissioners, who, so far as may be judged from the letters and papers relating to them and their work, laboured with an attention to the minutest details of their daily duties, a personal eagerness to ensure perfection, and a broad sense of their ethical relation towards the seamen and workmen, of whom they were at once the employers and protectors, with a success the Admiralty never attained before and has never equalled since. The earliest Commissioners were John Holland, Thos. Smith, Peter Pett, Robt. Thompson, and Col. Wm. Willoughby;[1387] the last-named died in 1651, and was replaced by Robt. Moulton, who himself died the next year. In 1653, Col. Fr. Willoughby, Ed. Hopkins, and major Neh. Bourne, who, besides being a soldier had also commanded the Speaker, were added to the first four. In 1654 Geo. Payler replaced Holland, and from then there was no change till 1657, when Nathan Wright succeeded Hopkins. All the Navy Commissioners, except Holland, had £250 a year, a sum for which they gave better value than did the members of the Admiralty Committee for their £400 a year; but for 1653 each was granted an extra £150 in consideration of the excessive and continuous toil of that year.
From the first they adopted a tone towards the Admiralty Committee which would hardly have been endurable but that it was excused by an obvious honesty, and justified by superior knowledge. Early in 1649 they recommended that the rope-makers at Woolwich should have their wages increased by twopence a day, but their letter was returned by the Admiralty Committee, probably with a reprimand. This was not to be borne in silence, so ‘we have cause to resent that we are so misunderstood as to be inhibited by you to do our duty.’ If the Committee has not itself power to make the order it can move Parliament, ‘who will not see men want, especially as in the sweat of these men’s brows consists not only their particular living but also that of the republic.... What interpretation soever may be made of our actions by those that have the supervision of them we shall not fail to represent the grievances of those under our charge when they represent them to us.’[1388] On 22nd May 1649 the admirals and captains at sea were ordered to address the Commissioners direct on all administrative details, thus leaving only matters of the highest importance to be dealt with by the Admiralty Committee. In some ways the relative position of superiors and inferiors seems to have been reversed, for, on one occasion, we find the Committee writing to the Commissioners about a course of action the former had decided on, that, ‘as you disapprove’ of such procedure, it was not to be adopted; and it frequently happened that the Council of State communicated directly with the Navy Commissioners, ignoring the intermediate Admiralty Committee.
During the Dutch war a Commissioner was stationed in charge of each of the principal yards—Pett at Chatham, Willoughby at Portsmouth, and Bourne at Harwich, which last place, in consequence of the operations on the North Sea and off the Dutch coast, had suddenly sprung into importance. Monk wrote concerning Bourne: ‘It is strange that twenty ships should be so long fitting out from Chatham, Woolwich, and Deptford, where there are so many docks ... when there have been twenty-two or more fitted out from Harwich in half the time by Major Bourne.’[1389] There is a consensus of evidence as to the way in which Bourne threw his heart into his work, and the success he obtained under difficulties due to the want of docks and materials at Harwich and an insufficient number of men. Notwithstanding Monk’s depreciatory reference to Chatham, Pett was very well satisfied with his operations there. A few months before he had reported to the Admiralty Committee that he had graved nine ships in one spring tide, without injury to ship or man; ‘truly it makes me stand amazed at the goodness of God in such unparalleled successes.’
Besides their superintendence of the building, repairing, and fitting out of ships, the purchase and distribution of stores, the control of the dockyards, and all the diverse minutiæ of administration in war time, the Commissioners were called upon to maintain the not very rigid discipline of the service. Hitherto all ranks had been allowed to do much as they pleased when ships were in port, but henceforth no captain was to leave his command for more than six hours without the express permission of either the Admiralty or Navy Commissioners, and during any such absence the lieutenant, or the master, was to remain on board; for the first disobedience the penalty was a fine of one month’s pay, for the second three months’, and for the third to be cashiered. Similar rules applied to all the officers; and men absent without leave forfeited a month’s pay. The clerks of the check[1390] were to ‘take an exact account’ how officers and others performed their duties, and once a week report to the Navy Commissioners, a regulation which, if loyally obeyed, must have made the clerks popular. The clerks of the check attached to the dockyards were to similarly watch the clerks on shipboard, and, in turn, report on them once a week to the Commissioners.[1391] This system was akin to that of the sixteenth-century Spanish navy, in which the duties were so arranged that each officer was a spy on another; admirable in theory, it did not suit English idiosyncrasies, and these reports never took any practical shape.
From 2nd June 1649, the Navy Commissioners had occupied rooms in the victualling office at Tower Hill, but in 1653 they found the annoyance caused by the proximity of the victuallers’ slaughterhouses there to be unbearable. It was not, however, till the next year that Sir John Wolstenholme’s house in Seething Lane was purchased for them for £2400, and became the Navy Office for a long period;[1392] the Treasurer’s, now a quite distinct office, was in Leadenhall Street, and its lease was renewed in February 1657 for eight years at a rental of £49, 6s 8d a year and a £700 fine. The next request of the Commissioners was that their number might be increased, as half the members of the Board were constantly away in charge of dockyards, and for this they ‘desire timely remedy or dismissal from our employment.’ It has been noticed that three new men, of whom certainly two—Bourne and Willoughby—were, in their sphere, amongst the ablest administrators who have ever served the state, were in consequence added in 1653. Besides the Commissioners, Thomas White at Dover, captain Hen. Hatsell at Plymouth, major Richard Elton at Hull, and major William Burton at Yarmouth, acting as Admiralty agents, had nearly as much work and responsibility, and executed it as ably, as their more highly placed colleagues.
In 1655 the salaries of subordinates at the Admiralty amounted to £1740, the secretary, Robert Blackborne, receiving £250. The first secretary of the Admiralty Committee, Robert Coytmore, had £150 a year, of which £50 was regarded as an extra given on condition that neither he nor his clerk received fees—a stipulation probably due to a lively recollection of the habits of Nicholas and his successor, Thomas Smith. The Navy Commissioners had no secretary, and until September 1653 each Commissioner was allowed only one clerk, at £30 a year—scanty assistance, considering the amount of work thrown into their hands. From September the number was doubled, and two purveyors were appointed to assist them in purchasing stores. The total annual cost of the Admiralty, the Navy Office, and the chief officers of the four dockyards was £11,179, 9s 10d.[1393]
If we may trust a later writer, the sums spent on the Navy Office, which bore only a trifling proportion to the naval expenses, sometimes reaching a million and a quarter, were not misapplied. Henry Maydman, who was a purser under the Commonwealth, and Mayor of Portsmouth in 1710, wrote long afterwards:—
In all the wars we had in the time of King Charles’s exile the Navy Office was so ordered that a man might have despatched any affair almost at one board ... and with the greatest ease imaginable, and cheapness too. For their public business was carried on with all imaginable application, and it was a crime for any one to absent himself from his post.[1394]
So far as the intentions and efforts of the Navy Commissioners were concerned this was doubtless true, but it is to be feared that the State Papers do not support the implication that money matters were settled with the same ease as those relating to the routine of daily management, although that, of course, was an imperfection for which they were not accountable, and over which they had no control. To the full extent of their power they watched not only over the public interests, but also over those of the men who, for the first time, seem to have looked up to officials of their position as friends and helpers. Some of the appeals they listened to are embodied in a letter to the Admiralty Committee.[1395]