Of paramount concern during the immediate post-war period was the necessity of bringing a greater degree of managerial efficiency to the dockyards [333]. A fundamental weakness was the position of the resident Commissioner. Working as a member of the Navy Board, it was the Commissioner's task to provide a link between the subordinate Board and the dockyard. All correspondence between the Boards in london and the respective officers of the yard passed unsealed through his office [342]. Aware of any Navy Board instructions, it was the Commissioner's task to report upon any shortcomings in the subsequent performance of the principal officers. However, should chastisement appear necessary, this would emanate entirely from the Navy Office [337, 340]. While sir thomas byam martin felt that this was sufficient for effective management [343], the Board of Admiralty disagreed and believed the authority of the Commissioner should be strengthened [341].

A further structural weakness identified by the Board of Admiralty during one of their post-war inspections was the number of post holders who had either overlapping authority or sub-divided duties. Between them, the Master Shipwright and Master Attendant were responsible for all the artisans and labourers employed in the yard. The former had authority over those directly employed on ships building and repairing, while the Master Attendant controlled similar groups employed on vessels moored in the harbour [332]. The storekeeper, clerk of the survey and clerk of the check were responsible for overseeing the delivery of stores. Additionally, the storekeeper was charged with the safekeeping and distribution of these stores; the clerk of the survey kept accounts of the quantities arriving and held in stock; and the clerk of the check examined the storekeeper's accounts [332]. The clerk of the check was also responsible for keeping the pay and muster books. It was his office that inspected the indentures of all new artificers and kept a record of workers employed and discharged [332]. The ropeyard was regarded as a completely separate entity. The clerk of the Ropeyard took responsibility for stores while the Master Rope-maker [337] was responsible for the direction of the workforce [341].

It was not only at principal officer level that there was an apparent excess of managers. The same was true at ‘inferior officer’ level. Here was a diverse group, which included some eligible for a dockyard house with others paid only slightly more than the ordinary yard artisan.

This chapter contains the transcripts of courts martial for the various types of social crime. For the present purpose the term ‘social crime’ can be defined as a transgression against either the conventions or morality of eighteenth-century British society ashore. therefore, included here are trials dealing exclusively with alcohol [51–6], property [57–64], violence [65–73], disturbances of the peace [74–5] and sex [76–80].

Social crimes constituted only about a quarter of the alleged offences tried by naval courts martial. A preliminary survey of the charges listed in 22 of the 118 volumes of transcripts for the period under consideration reveals that 22 per cent of these transgressions were of this nature. Some were combined with other offences. Mariners tried solely for social offences constituted just 15.8 per cent of the total.

By comparison, naval crimes amounted to nearly 78 per cent of all the offences in the sample. Given that social crimes adjudicated by naval courts martial were far fewer, how can a chapter pertaining to these offences that is roughly the same length as that on naval crimes be justified? The answer to this question is straightforward. It is only through the inclusion of multiple examples of trials for social offences that a clear picture emerges of the legal standards used to determine guilt or innocence in such cases. For example, from the transcripts of proceedings for drunkenness it is evident that those found guilty of this offence had to have been too intoxicated to do their duty. similarly, the minutes of enquiries involving indictments for buggery reveal that the criterion for conviction was anal penetration.

Of the social offences mentioned in the sample, alcohol-related crimes were the most common, comprising almost a third of the charges. The second most frequent type of accusation involved transgressions against property (theft, plunder, embezzlement, fraud, and so on), which constituted about 28 per cent. These were followed by offences involving violence (homicide, fighting, striking an officer, self-mutilation), which made up 21 per cent of the total. Sexual offences were next, amounting to a little more than 9 per cent of the aggregate. And disturbances of the peace (rioting, quarrelling) were the least frequent cause for indictment, coming to only about 8 per cent of the allegations in this category. These social offences are dealt with here in the same order.

In the first years of the American War, the armed forces of Great britain were, on the one hand, humiliated and defeated by the American rebels and, on the other, frustrated by the French and Spanish. In this period the British army had failed to suppress the American rebellion. Indeed, after the defeat at Saratoga the war in America became for the British no less than a quag- mire, which endlessly absorbed military resources. The Royal Navy, the strongest navy in the world at the time and a force with a tradition of victory, proved, in the first years of the American War, to be not only powerless to prevent blockade runners from carrying military supplies to the enemy in America, but also equally unable to prevent attacks by American cruisers on British seaborne trade. When the French entered the war in 1778 many among the British had hoped for, and even expected, the conflict to begin with a decisive battle, such as Quiberon bay, that would allow the Royal Navy, in essence, to sweep the French from the seas. However, 1778 was not 1759. The war with france began with an indecisive action off Ushant between the French and British fleets. It was followed in 1779 by an attempt by the French and Spanish to invade the British Isles. During the summer of 1779 the British would see, while the Royal Navy appeared to be stand- ing by idly, the warships of france and Spain parade in the english channel off Plymouth. To many observers, it was only the ineptitude of the French and Spanish that actually prevented an invasion of Britain.

The ideological nature of the American War as well as military defeat at the hands of the Americans and French had a corrosive effect, not only on the British body-politic but also on the officers of the Royal Navy, di- viding the officer corps into two warring camps, which would keep battling each other over the conduct and propriety of the American War for the duration of the conflict. A number of officers of the Royal Navy who opposed the government's American policy refused to serve against the Americans. For instance, Admiral hon. Augustus Keppel, an outspo- ken critic of the government's American policy, openly proclaimed that ‘he was ready to do his duty but not in the line of America’.

A great deal has been written about the actions of seagoing fleets, the individuals who commanded them and the vessels that made up those fleets. In contrast, the organisational infrastructure necessary for the purpose of building and preparing warships for the fleet has often been ignored. It was this failure to recognise an important aspect of naval history that first spurred me into several decades of researching and writing the history of naval dockyards. In britain, which had the first industrial revolution, the royal dockyards could boast a civilian workforce that was considerably larger than that of any other industrial enterprise long before the industrial take-off. By the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the seven home yards of the Royal navy employed a workforce of nearly 16,000 men and even some women. Even among industrial and social historians this scale of employment has often been ignored. Yet, on account of their size, the dockyards add much to our understanding of developing social processes. For it was within those yards that a system of recruitment, training and supervision of a large-scale workforce was pioneered. At the same time the artisans and labourers of the yards developed their own particular response to the means by which they were managed, attempting to ensure their own interests were protected and acknowledged.

My entry into the field of dockyard research was eased by the seminal work of Michael Oppenheim on Tudor and early Stuart naval administration, of John Ehrman on the navy of the late seventeenth century, and of Daniel Baugh on naval administration during the early eighteenth century. By fully integrating the function and working of the dockyards into their overall research, these three naval historians established the importance of the yards while indicating necessary directions for future research. Publications by the Navy Records Society added depth to my knowledge by issuing two volumes of collected documents edited by Baugh and Merriman. While the former revisited and underpinned his earlier publication, expanding his time frame, Merriman examined naval administration, including the dockyards, during the age of Queen Anne (1702–14). Later but also of importance were the works of Roger Morriss and Jonathan Coad. Both focussed specifically on the royal dockyards, morriss undertaking an in-depth study of the wartime period 1793–1815 while Coad, in two illustrated books, concentrated on the architecture of the yards.

At the pinnacle of naval administration was the Board of Admiralty, its pre-eminent position empowering it to decide all matters relative to the navy and its departments and expressed in these terms in 1787 by the Commission for inquiring into Fees. It was a description that was equally valid for the period 1815 to 1865. Encompassed within the Admiralty's area of authority were the dockyards, the Board able to give directions on all matters relating to management, construction and design of ships, the nature and quality of materials produced, wage and salary levels and the conditions under which the workforce was employed [368].

Situated between the Admiralty and the dockyards was an intermediate body, the Navy Board. Created to take instructions from the Admiralty and offer advice when called upon, the Commissioners of the Navy Board, over nearly two centuries of continuous existence, had gradually become a semi-autonomous body. This independence arose partly from the means by which Commissioners on this Board were appointed. While those who made up the Admiralty were political appointees who held office no longer than any government, the Commissioners of the Navy Board had semi-permanent tenure arising from appointment by letters patent from the sovereign. This gave the inferior Board an authority based on experience, which gave rise occasionally to apparent resentment at being told what to do by Admiralty ‘amateurs’ whose term of office was uncertain [385].

By 1816, the Navy Board consisted of four principal officers and seven Commissioners. The principal officers (the comptroller and three surveyors) had duties that brought them into direct contact with the dockyard at Chatham. In addition, the seven Commissioners frequently shared in decisions relating to the yard at Chatham, the result of each being a member of one of three committees that were responsible for executing Board business. Introduced by an order-in-council of 1796 [369], the establishment of these committees resulted from a recommendation by the Commission on fees that followed an investigation of the Navy Office in 1786–87. It was the intention that these committees should help reduce the amount of work placed before full meetings of the Board. One outcome was that each individual member, through attendance at committee and Board meetings, had little time to oversee the department for which he was responsible.

The three committees formed in 1796 were those for correspondence, accounts and stores.

I

The study of British naval courts martial during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars is important for several reasons. Not only does it contribute to our understanding of military jurisprudence in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but it furthers our knowledge of Georgian and Regency criminal law in general. Moreover, the transcripts of trials afloat, which form the core of the present volume, offer a unique window to the social conditions and behaviour aboard the King's ships at the time.

During the period under discussion, naval courts martial were the highest level of enforcement of the criminal code promulgated by An Act for Amending, Explaining and Reducing into One Act of Parliament the Laws Relating to the Government of His Majesty's Ships Vessels, and Forces by Sea, or, simply, the consolidation act of 1749 as revised by a statute passed in the nineteenth year of George iii's reign. Known as the articles of War, this code consisted of thirty-six clauses delineating virtually every naval offence and establishing their punishment.

The articles of War can be divided broadly into two general categories: social crimes and naval offences. Social crimes include such phenomena as drunkenness, theft, buggery, profanity, murder, quarrelling and fighting – that is, the same types of infraction dealt with ashore by the common law. Naval offences consist of episodes like mutiny, desertion, insolence, loss of ship, cowardice, neglect of duty and unofficerlike behaviour – in other words, transgressions against the needs of the service.

In addition to including the various clauses of the criminal code afloat, the Consolidation Act prescribed the authority of naval courts martial, their composition, several of the oaths to be taken at them and the penalties for prevarication, contempt of court and withholding evidence from a naval tribunal. These panels had a very limited jurisdiction. Only officers and men ‘in actual service and in full pay’ could be brought before them, and then only for offences enumerated by the articles of War and perpetrated in areas where the common law did not have jurisdiction, that is ‘upon the main seas, or in great rivers only, beneath the bridges of the said rivers nigh to the sea, or in any haven, river or creek within the jurisdiction of the admiralty’ and in all places which did not acknowledge the sovereignty of the British monarch.

The manufacturing side of Chatham dockyard underwent considerable change during the years 1815 to 1865. At the outset of this period it was heavily dependent on muscle power, with no operating steam engines installed in any of the centres of manufacture. By 1865, all but a few specialised crafts had witnessed the impact of steam. Also, the nature of materials under manufacture was changing [173, 191] with new factories and workshops, designed from the outset to make full use of steam- powered machinery, beginning to operate [163, 190]. However, development during this period was piecemeal, lacking overall and co-ordinated planning [195].

The revolution in steam was already forging ahead in 1815, with construction underway of Marc Brunel's mechanically powered wood mills. The building work was mostly undertaken by the yard's work force [155]. Upon completion, the mills transformed the process of timber plank manufacture, able to process quantities from a variety of types of timber at considerable speed [172] both for Chatham and other yards [152, 171]. As a result, only a small number of sawyers were retained, these either on a reduced rate of pay, undertaking work in connection with the operation of the mill or carrying out tasks too complex for the saws of the wood mill [196]. Although designed by Marc Brunel, the man responsible for overseeing the completion of the mill was a mr ellicombe, upon whom Brunel placed much trust [148]. However, on the appointment of a Master Sawyer of the Mills [144], Ellicombe was considered by the Commissioners at the Navy Board as surplus to requirements [146, 147, 149]. The totality of the finished design, encompassing not only eight sets of circular powered saws but also a canal for the easy movement of newly arrived timber and an overhead rail system which directly connected the mill to an area for the storage of planks, attracted visiting dignitaries [145] and much published praise [150, 184]. Not surprisingly, it was subject to an inspection by the Commissioners of the Navy Board shortly after its completion [164].

Having been designed to meet the demands of the war-time navy, the wood mills were soon producing more sawn timber than required, leading to part of the building being considered for conversion to storage [157]. The upper floor accommodated a duplicate set of the block-making machines [142, 143] – Brunel's other contribution to britain's naval dockyards.

The ringing of a dockyard bell officially denoted both the length of the working day and the time of the mid-day lunch break [275, 295, 297, 304]. It was this same bell that was rung on Friday mornings to call the men to the pay office to collect their wages [323]. Upon entering the yard, both morning and afternoon, the workforce was formally mustered [297, 304]. The length of the working day varied by season, maximum use being made of daylight, although the working of overtime might extend these hours [272, 304]. Some differences in the working day existed between the yards prior to 1834 [304]. In all, six days were normally worked each week, although in June 1822 this total was temporarily reduced to five as a means of economising on the overall wage bill [296]. Four days in each year were given as holidays, these including the monarch's birthday [287]. When any of the agreed days fell on a sunday, the following monday was allowed as the holiday [301]. The launch day of a ship was given as an additional half-day holiday but only for those involved in its construction. An exceptional two-day holiday was given in august 1862 to allow dockyard employees to visit the Great exhibition in london [326].

The end of the wars with France in 1815 made a considerable impact upon all those employed at Chatham. Whereas the two previous decades had been characterised by a degree of job security, an upward growth in workforce numbers and frequent overtime, the post-war period was to witness a complete reversal. A government forced to economise sought major cutbacks in the numbers employed and in paid working hours. However, neither the working of a five-day week nor the reduction in overtime followed closely upon the arrival of peace, a large amount of work having to be undertaken upon ships of the returning fleet. Indeed, the immediate post-war period witnessed an augmentation of numbers employed, with some, including the women of the colour loft, allowed overtime [268, 269].

Post-war retrenchment only hit Chatham in March 1816. The Navy Board was forced to cut back levels of payment and hours worked [272] and to begin a series of reductions in numbers employed [271].