Admiralty War Staff
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| Agency overview | |
|---|---|
| Formed | 8th January 1912 |
| Preceding agency | |
| Dissolved | May 1917 |
| Superseding agency | |
| Jurisdiction | Government of the United Kingdom |
| Headquarters | Admiralty Building Whitehall London |
| Agency executive |
|
| Parent agency | Admiralty |
The Admiralty War Staff was a former operational planning department within the Admiralty during World War I. It was instituted on the 8th January 1912 and was in effect a war council whose head reported directly to the First Sea Lord. It existed until 1917. After the war ended, it was replaced by the Admiralty Naval Staff department.
The department's development can be traced back to 1885. It evolved out of some of the functions within the Naval Intelligence Department (NID), which originally administered two divisions: Foreign Intelligence Division and Mobilisation Division.
In 1900 a third was added, the War and Coast Defences Division, to deal with issues of strategy and defence. In 1902 a fourth function was added, the Trade Division, which was created for matters relating to the protection of merchant shipping.
The Trade Division was abolished in October 1909 in the wake of the Committee of Imperial Defence inquiry into the feud between the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir John Fisher and former Commander-in-Chief Channel Fleet, Admiral Lord Charles Beresford, when it was discovered that the captain heading the Trade Division had been supplying the latter with confidential information during the inquiry.
Following restructuring the NID was relieved of its responsibility for war planning and strategy when the outgoing Fisher created an interim Naval War Council as a stop-gap remedy to criticisms emanating from the Beresford Inquiry that the Navy needed a naval staff, a role the NID had been in fact fulfilling since at least 1900, if not earlier. After this re-organisation, war planning and strategic matters were transferred to the newly created Naval Mobilisation Department (NMD), and the NID reverted to the position it held prior to 1887, an intelligence collection and collation organisation.
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