Director of Naval Ordnance

This article describes the administration of the British Admiralty. As of 1911^[update], it consists of the following branches and officers.

Spending branches are in the department of the controller, and it will be well, while we are dealing with the material side of the Royal Navy, to describe briefly their character and duties.

The civil branches of the navy tributary to the controller are those of the director of naval construction, the engineer-in-chief, the directors of naval ordnance, of dockyards and of stores, and the inspector of dockyard expense accounts. The first duty of the controller is, as has been explained, in relation to the design and construction of ships and their machinery, and the executive officials who have charge of that work are the director of naval construction and the engineer-in-chief, whose operations are closely interrelated.

A vast administrative stride has been made in this particular branch of the admiralty. The work of design and construction now go forward together, and the admiralty designers are in close touch with the work in hand at the dockyards. This has been largely brought about by the institution, in 1883, of the Royal Corps of Naval Constructors.

The Royal Corps of Naval Constructors, whose members interchange their duties between the designing of ships at the admiralty and practical work at the dockyards.

It is through the Director of Naval Construction that many of the spending departments are set in motion, since he is responsible both for the design of ships and for their construction.

It deserves to be noticed, however, that a certain obscurity exists in regard, to the relative duties of the director of naval construction and the director of dockyards touching constructive works in the yards. The former officer has also charge of all the work given out to contract, though it is the business of the dockyard officials to certify that the conditions of the contract have been fulfilled.

In all this work the director of naval construction collaborates with the engineer-in-chief, who is an independent officer and not a subordinate, and whose procedure in regard to machinery closely resembles that adopted in the matter of contract-built ships.

The Director of Naval Ordnance is another officer of the Controller's Department whose operations are very closely related to the duties of the Director of Naval Construction, and the relation is both intimate and sustained, for in the Ordnance department everything that relates to guns, gun-mountings, magazines, torpedo apparatus, electrical fittings for guns, and other electrical fittings is centred.

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