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].

The selected documents in this volume provide an insight into the workings of a naval dockyard during a period of transformation. The years 1815 to 1865 were the ones in which the naval dockyards fully harnessed the use of steam and made the conversion from constructing ships of timber to those of iron. At Chatham, these changes were particularly apparent. In 1815, apart from a newly completed sawmill, the yard was entirely devoid of steam machinery. By the end of the period, the yard situation was very different. Not only was it building ships designed to accommodate steam engines but, throughout the yard, steam-powered engines had been installed in various workshops and centres of manufacture and were used for powering pumps for draining the docks. As for the transition to iron shipbuilding, this was a far more dramatic process. Throughout the period, those in the smithery were employed in the manufacture of increasing amounts of ironwork, producing items for use in ships’ hulls together with fittings for all classes of vessels. Nonetheless, this was no real preparation for the construction of a 9,800- ton iron battleship, the task that confronted Chatham in 1860. The final product, completed in september 1864, was achilles, the first such ship to be built in any royal dockyard – a vessel that signalled a new direction, not only for Chatham, but for all the naval dockyards.

The adoption of steam machinery combined with the decision to undertake iron shipbuilding at Chatham inevitably had a dramatic impact upon all those employed at the dockyard. To keep pace with the increase of steam engines, an ever expanding number of mechanists and machine- minders had to be employed, culminating in the appointment of a Chief Engineer at the head of a separate department. At the same time, other groups of workers found themselves possessing skills that were now better performed by steam-powered machinery. Among these were sawyers and scavelmen. The former were unable to compete with the speed and efficiency of the powered saws of Brunel's mill while the latter, hitherto responsible for the clearing and drainage of the docks, were made redundant with the introduction of steam pumps. However, such changes were nothing more than a ripple compared with the revolution in ship construction methods brought about by the laying down of Achilles.

The summer of 1812 was wet and cool, bringing some relief to the small staff of the Hydrographical Office on the often-stifling top floor of the Admiralty Building in Whitehall. Every space in the passageways was taken up by the boxes which they laboured to fill with charts destined for ships of the war-time Royal Navy deployed from the Baltic to the Cape of Good Hope, and from the East Indies to an unwelcome new theatre on the borders of the USA. On Thursday 1 July, during a lull in superintendence of this work, the Hydrographer returned to his desk to consider a letter and a manuscript survey, one of over 30 which were rendered from the fleet during the year.

Captain Thomas Hurd examined these eagerly as they were passed up by the clerks to the Board of Admiralty. It was generally a mixed bag. Many were swift reconnaissance surveys made in the heat of operations, sometimes recorded as a sketch in the remark books which captains and masters were required to render. They might supply a few soundings which could be dropped into smaller-scale published charts. This inspection was, however, the only opening for Hurd to spot talent for the vision which he would represent repeatedly to the Board and eventually bring to fruition: ‘ an establishment […] of officers and scientific young men […] capable of making nautical surveys in whatever part of the world their future services may happen to place them in’.

Hurd's vision had been shaped by his own experience in the front line. His reputation in the Admiralty had been made by a remarkable survey which enabled the creation of a naval base in the hazardous waters of the Bermudan archipelago. Consequently, he had been the immediate choice to undertake an examination of another complex of islets and rocks in the approaches to the French naval base of Brest following the loss of a 74-gun ship of the Royal Navy's Inshore Squadron in 1804.

When he came to reiterate his vision in 1814, he would stress ‘the great deficiency of our nautical knowledge in almost every part of the world, but more particularly on the coastline of our own Dominions’.

The coastal landscape of Alderney is dominated by the relics of its former strategic maritime prominence – a prominence based on British naval planning of the mid-Victorian period which would transform the island over a critically brief interval of thirty years in the mid-nineteenth century. However, it would be misleading to suggest that this was the first and last occasion on which the Channel Islands archipelago would find itself in the front line of international conflict.

Islands in the front line

The idea that the Channel Islands – as we now call them – would provide an advanced station for English and British warships and a base from which to observe and intercept enemy shipping, may be truly said to have originated as far back as the thirteenth century after King John's loss of Normandy, but more recently – during the War of American Independence – the British government would support modest plans to improve the coast defences of the islands, and build major works at Fort Regent in Jersey and Fort George in Guernsey. At this time, and following French commitment to develop the port of Cherbourg, more serious attention would be given to the provision of improved harbour facilities in the three principal islands in order to secure military support and naval protection in time of war. The threat from France was real and ever-present: for instance, an attack by a French squadron on Elizabeth Castle and a foiled coup de main in St Ouen's Bay, Jersey, in 1779; the attempt by three French privateers to seize Alderney in 1780, and the defeat of Baron de Rullecourt's forces at the Battle of Jersey after a successful landing in 1781.

Fears of imminent attacks on the Channel Islands during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars were given renewed impetus after Napoleon's visit to Cherbourg in April 1803, relaunching Vauban's project of over a century earlier to create un port militaire, and appointing Joseph Cachin as Directeur des travaux maritimes. Writing to Lord Pelham, Lieutenant- Governor General Sir John Doyle urged: ‘Your Lordship knows we are the advanced posts and that the fate of these islands would have an influence upon publick opinion.’

The waters around the Channel Islands and the Gulf of Saint-Malo are known to be dangerous. Treacherous rocks that scatter the sea and strong tides produce rapid currents.

The weather is frequently difficult, and fogs are not unusual. The need for accurate charts drawn at an appropriate scale and precise nautical instructions appears then to be quite obvious. The French hydrographic service, known during the major part of the nineteenth century as the Dépôt des cartes et plans de la Marine before changing in 1886 to the Service hydrographique, made efforts to provide seamen with a collection of documents of great quality.

It is interesting to explore further the sequence of the different surveys and to replace them in their political and economic context whenever possible. It creates a rather contradictory image. The maritime activities whose prosperity was the final aim of these efforts were languishing during the nineteenth century. The harbours of the western coasts of Cotentin Peninsula and northern Brittany were lagging behind, unable to make the necessary investments in order to attract freight. Saint-Malo missed out on industrial development and never regained its former grandeur from the previous century. The port collapsed and did not even rank among the first twenty in France. Granville, despite some improvements and the construction of two wet docks in 1856 and 1873, never emerged and remained a fishing port. Few coasters exploited the sea routes between Cherbourg and the harbours of Brittany. Moreover, the trade that was mostly made up of agricultural products was in the hands of British shipowners and businessmen. They enjoyed preferential terms and prospered on the commercial relationships between France and the Channel Islands.

There were few shipowners in this area, and they concentrated mostly on high-sea fishing on the Grand Banks and in Iceland. This activity was more rewarding and attracted the major part of the available capital and able seamen. The port of Granville held 50 fishing boats, Saint-Malo nearly 70 and Saint- Brieuc 60 in 1866. The activity employed at that time almost 7,500 people. Coastal fishing was by comparison fruitless. Every year the statistics bulletin3 described the fishing practices as a routine and regretted that fishermen lacked a spirit of enterprise. With limited access to capital, they could only have small day boats and dredgers.

The phrase ‘fire no guns, shed no tears’ is part of the chorus from a song called ‘Barret's Privateers’, which tells the story of a man who signed up to be part of the crew of a British privateer called The Antelope during the American War of Independence. The protagonist of the song deems himself deceived by the promise that the crew would have to fire no guns and shed no tears and that American ships would simply surrender themselves to The Antelope as prizes. As a whole the song evokes a darkly romanticized version of eighteenth-century privateers as poor sailors duped into joining leaky old ships with bad-tempered captains. These privateers would then ply the seas with abandon looking for gold-laden prizes with the blessing and non-intervention of the British state. It is the second part of this romantic outlook on privateers that this chapter seeks to address. Far from being a benign overseer of legalised piracy, British wartime governments in the eighteenth century were deeply concerned about the effect that the actions of privateers could have on British maritime strategy. Privateering as a concept and as a reality was deeply embedded in British strategic thinking and in British diplomacy with neutral nations. Far from operating as a remote arm of the British wartime mercantile sector, privateers played a key role in the delicate negotiations over neutral rights. This was certainly the case during the first four years of the Seven Years War when Anglo-Dutch relations were focused on Dutch neutral rights and the taking of Dutch prizes by British privateers.

From a strategic perspective, the ideal role for privateers in the first few years of the Seven Years War was to destroy French seaborne trade without needlessly molesting or antagonizing neutral shipping. This ideal role was consistently complicated by two factors. Firstly, neutral nations like the Dutch Republic often carried French goods in their ships in order to profit from wartime relaxations of mercantilist-inspired trade restrictions. Secondly, privateers were hard to control at sea and often captured neutral vessels indiscriminately. Much political effort was therefore expended in trying to contain the political damage done by privateers and in trying to get neutral nations to both remain neutral and to stop carrying French trade.

When the idea for an international maritime history symposium in the Channel Islands was first mooted some twenty years ago, it received the enthusiastic support of the late Marc Michel. It was fitting, therefore, that he should live to see his dream realised in Alderney in September 2019, and that he should play such a prominent role in the organisation and recording of the event which proved to be such a popular and resounding success. All of this was made possible by the foresight and generosity of Mary Euler, who set up The Henry Euler Memorial Trust in commemoration of her husband, Henry Euler, a direct descendant of the celebrated Swiss mathematician, who had served as an RNVR torpedo officer in HMS Illustrious from her date of commission, through the Mediterranean campaign and including the raid on the Italian fleet at Taranto.

As the Trust's patron, His Excellency, the Lieutenant Governor of Guernsey, Vice Admiral Sir Ian Corder, KCB stated in his opening address at the 2019 Symposium that one of the Trust's principal objectives is ‘to inform, develop and maintain the interest of the inhabitants of Alderney and others in the maritime heritage of Alderney’. By placing Alderney in its Channel Islands’ setting, thence within the wider context of Anglo-French relations between 1689 and 1918, the Symposium enabled leading British and French historians to complement existing scholarship which has tended to treat the Islands as a place apart. Their strategic location was of immense importance in Anglo- French relations – the Islands shaped national strategies in war and peace, and strategy shaped the Islands in equal measure.

The Trustees have expressed their warm gratitude for the unreserved support received from Andrew Lambert and Jean de Préneuf in the organisation of the 2019 Symposium, and for the agreements reached with their respective academic institutions – King's College London, the Université de Lille and the Service Historique de la Défense, Paris. The close working relationship thus established, and the outstanding contributions of all those speakers who participated in the 2019 Symposium, have laid a solid foundation for future cooperation and research into the maritime history of Alderney and the Channel Islands throughout all periods of history.

In the mid-nineteenth century the complex relationship between Britain, France and the Channel Islands acquired a new urgency, as the British state launched a massive project to create an artificial harbour on the Island of Alderney, the lynchpin of a system of maritime security that would ensure the safety of British merchant shipping in wartime, countering the threat posed by the rapidly advancing naval base and fortified harbour at Cherbourg. In the event of war Braye Harbour would be critical to Britain's global system, the physical manifestation of a distinctive maritime culture and the strategic methods of a unique seapower state. Together with a second new harbour at Portland, 60 miles north, it would enable the Royal Navy to control the western entrance of the English Channel, isolating Cherbourg from the French naval bases on the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts. This massive, costly project, the product of an era of heightened Anglo-French tension, exploited the latest engineering expertise to address the strategic problem of commanding the seas with short-ranged steam ships. But Braye was only the latest in a long line of developments that linked the Channel Islands into the British strategic system and, like those that had gone before, it changed the relationship between Britain, France and the Islands, and the Islands themselves. How should we understand the interlocking relationships between great powers and small islands, terrestrial identities and maritime realities? The conflicted history of Braye Harbour suggests an ambitious cultural reading could offer a way forward.

Early in 1862, as the British House of Commons prepared to decide whether to continue funding the massive naval harbour project at Braye, geologist, mining engineer and author David Thomas Ansted (1814−80) elevated a humdrum issue of expenditure and engineering onto an altogether higher plane. Ansted presented the harbour and fortress complex as the key to naval dominion, and a totem of national culture. His article ‘England's “Broad Stone of Honour”’ linked the great Prussian fortress of Ehrenbreitstein, looming over Coblenz at the confluence of the Moselle and the Rhine, the key to the defence of Germany, with the new bastion that secured command of the English Channel: they were the representative bulwarks of their respective countries.