The Navy Board was the commission responsible for the day-to-day civil administration of the Royal Navy between 1546 and 1832. The board was headquartered within the Navy Office.
The Sea Fencibles were naval fencible units established to provide a close-in line of defence and obstruct the operation of enemy shipping, principally during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.
The Hon. George Villiers was a British courtier and politician from the Villiers family. The youngest son of the diplomat Lord Hyde, he was an intimate of Princess Amelia and personal supporter of her father, George III. His favour within the Royal Family and his father's influence brought him a number of sinecures to support him. However, Villiers was more interested in the operation of the royal farms at Windsor Castle than in politics or the duties of his offices. When his bookkeeping as Paymaster of the Marines was carefully examined in 1810, Villiers' carelessness and the speculation of his clerk had left him in debt to the Crown by more than £250,000. This exposure touched off a public scandal; Villiers promptly surrendered all his property to the Crown and threw himself on the king's mercy. The misconduct of Joseph Hunt as Treasurer of the Ordnance to some extent obscured Villiers' own misconduct, and he was able to retain other sinecures and a stable, if reduced, income from them until his death in 1827.
The Apollo-class sailing frigates were a series of twenty-seven ships that the British Admiralty commissioned be built to a 1798 design by Sir William Rule. Twenty-five served in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, two being launched too late.
Edward Holl was an architect to the Navy Board, then later Surveyor of Buildings to the Board of Admiralty of the Royal Navy. His father is presumed to be Edward Holl, a stonemason from Beccles in Suffolk, who died in January 1816.
During the early 17th century, England's relative naval power deteriorated; in the course of the rest of the 17th century, the office of the Admiralty and Marine Affairs steered the Navy's transition from a semi-amateur Navy Royal fighting in conjunction with private vessels into a fully professional institution, a Royal Navy. Its financial provisions were gradually regularised, it came to rely on dedicated warships only, and it developed a professional officer corps with a defined career structure, superseding an earlier mix of sailors and socially prominent former soldiers.
The Glorious Revolution of 1688 rearranged the political map of Europe, and led to a series of wars with France that lasted well over a century. This was the classic age of sail; while the ships themselves evolved in only minor ways, technique and tactics were honed to a high degree, and the battles of the Napoleonic Wars entailed feats that would have been impossible for the fleets of the 17th century. Because of parliamentary opposition, James II fled the country. The landing of William III and the Glorious Revolution itself was a gigantic effort involving 100 warships and 400 transports carrying 11,000 infantry and 4,000 horses. It was not opposed by the English or Scottish fleets.
HMS Cockatrice was the fourth of the Alert-class British Royal Navy cutters. She was launched in 1781 and had an uneventful career until the Navy sold her in 1802. Private interests purchased her, lengthened her, and changed her rig to that of a brig. They hired her out to the Navy and she was in service as a hired armed brig from 1806 to 1808. She then returned to mercantile service until she was condemned at Lisbon in May 1816 as not worth repairing.
The Naval Works Department was the department of the Inspector-General of Naval Works, Brigadier-General Sir Samuel Bentham, who in 1796 had been given responsibility for modernising and mechanising the Royal Navy dockyards. The Department was established under the direct authority of the Board of Admiralty on 25 March 1796. In 1808 Bentham's job title was changed to Civil Architect and Engineer of the Navy, and he and his department were placed under the oversight of the Navy Board. In 1812 Bentham was dismissed and the department dissolved; most of its responsibilities were taken over by a new Department of the Surveyor of Buildings.
The Navy Office was the government office responsible for the civil administration of the British Royal Navy from 1576 to 1832. It contained all the members of the Navy Board and various other departments and offices. The day-to-day business of the Navy Office was headed by the Clerk of the Acts from 1660 until 1796. When this position was abolished duties were assumed by separate committees for Accounts, Correspondence, Stores, Transports and Victualling presided over by the Comptroller of the Navy. The Navy Office was one of two government offices that were jointly responsible for directing naval affairs. In 1832 following reforms of the naval service the Navy Office was abolished and its functions and staff taken over by the Admiralty.
The Marine Pay Department was formed in 1755, and replaced the earlier Marine Pay Office that was established in 1702. It was responsible for processing marines' pay to the Royal Marine Divisions located at Chatham, Portsmouth, Plymouth and Woolwich. The department was initially administered by the Paymaster of the Marines whose title later changed to the Paymaster and Inspector General of Marines. In 1809 it absorbed the secretariat duties of the Marine Department. The department existed until 1831 as part of the Royal Marine Office when it was abolished and its duties transferred to the Navy Pay Office.
Benjamin Tucker was an English civil servant. He served in the Royal Navy as a purser from 1792 to 1798 and was secretary to the senior naval officer John Jervis, 1st Earl of St Vincent, whom he served under for three more years, until St Vincent was made First Lord of the Admiralty in 1801; Tucker became his private secretary in 1802 and then briefly served as Second Secretary at the Admiralty in 1804. Tucker, who has been characterised as "an aggressive Whig", was also appointed by St Vincent to a seat on the Navy Board in November 1801. He was Second Secretary again from 1806 to 1807. From 1810, he was Surveyor-General of Duchy of Cornwall.
Sir Henry Peake (1753–1825) was a shipbuilder and designer to the Royal Navy who rose to be Surveyor of the Navy.
Sir Edward Hunt (c.1730–1787) was a British shipbuilder and designer who rose to be Surveyor of the Navy.
Sir William Rule (c.1750–1816) was a shipbuilder and designer to the Royal Navy who rose to be Surveyor of the Navy.
