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The Graham Board of Admiralty Some things remained the same at the Admiralty Board after 1832. There was still a noticeable change of pace as the seasons progressed, most obviously after the ‘Glorious Twelfth of August’, the start of the shooting season, when there might be barely a Board quorum. Overall, though, the Lords Commissioners were more loaded down than before. Some of the reforms had cut work. There was less repetitive decision-making; and board no longer wrote to board – an eighth of the total correspondence, according to Graham's calculation. But the gains were not absolute. Repeated decisions had often been decisions that were nodded through: now their Lordships had to pay close attention to the issues involved, and not assume that they had been studied already. And business once dealt with between boards could reappear in different guises. Admiralty Board meetings in the 1830s were not much longer than they had been, but all the lords now had extensive further duties. After a Board meeting of a couple of hours, the superintending lords had regularly to walk down to Somerset House for a heavy afternoon personally supervising the work of the Principal Offices. Any serious problems met there would have to be noted, and submitted for the consideration of the next Board meeting – in essence little different from the old system of referring business from the Navy Office to the Admiralty for a decision, but here too the task was now focused on the Lords Commissioners.

This is an important new history of decision-making and policy-making in the British Admiralty from Trafalgar to the aftermath of Jutland. C. I. Hamilton explores the role of technological change, the global balance of power and, in particular, of finance and the First World War in shaping decision-making and organisational development within the Admiralty. He shows that decision-making was found not so much in the hands of the Board but at first largely in the hands of individuals, then groups or committees, and finally certain permanent bureaucracies. The latter bodies, such as the Naval Staff, were crucial to the development of policy-making as was the civil service Secretariat under the Permanent Secretary. By the 1920s the Admiralty had become not just a proper policy-making organisation, but for the first time a thoroughly civil-military one.

Staff education, doctrine and discussion, before the war We have seen that various advances were made in the Intelligence Department and the associated staff during the decade or so before the First World War, what with the broadening of the existing organisation, and the attempts to improve direction and co-ordination. Properly to assess the achievement, however, we must take account of what hindsight shows us to be a closely connected series of requirements for effective naval planning in the modern era. First, if plans are to be drawn up, and later carried through operationally, then one needs adequately trained staff officers both at the centre, acting as the chief planners, and others serving the commanding officers at the sharp end. That obviously implies schemes of staff education; but what it also entails, if staff are to talk to and understand staff, is a set of principles common to all and suitable as a basis for action. In short, one needs doctrine. But doctrine is not sufficient, either at the centre or the periphery; one also needs informed discussion. At the operational level it may well be necessary so officers understand fully what is expected of them, and can if needed point out potential difficulties. Much the same is necessary at the planning level; here we can refer again to what W. Graham Greene wrote in 1910: there are certain important questions which ought to be discussed & which ought not to be left entirely to a settlement by one man's brain. However good an individual may be he is certain to get useful ideas from others.