Treasurer of the Navy

“ We know, that, if the paymaster should deny himself the advantages of his bank, the public, as things stand, is not the richer for it by a single shilling. This I thought it necessary to say as to the offensive magnitude of the profits of this office, that we may proceed in reformation on the principles of reason, and not on the feelings of envy.
The treasurer of the navy is, mutatis mutandis, in the same circumstances. Indeed, all accountants are. ”

“ When a treasury is made a prey to harpies of both sexes of this order, there is hardly any limit to be placed to their rapacity. Subordinate officers will profess to have received money for their departments, when, in point of fact, it has really passed into the hands of some courtier who has secured their compliance by a bribe. Pepys, indeed, in his Memoirs relating to the State of the Royal Navy of England for Ten Years determined December 1688, asserts that, during the worst time of King Charles's reign, the Lord High Treasurer did annually pay out £400,000 for the service of the navy. ”

“ And here do hear from them by discourse that they are like to undo the Treasurer’s instruments of the Navy by making it a rule that they shall repay all money paid to wrong parties, which is a thing not to be supported by these poor creatures the Treasurer’s instruments, as it is also hard for seamen to be ruined by their paying money to whom they please. I know not what will be the issue of it. I find these gentlemen to sit all day, and only eat a bit of bread at noon, and a glass of wine; and are resolved to go through their business with great severity and method. ”

“ At Lady Day, 1686, the debts of the Navy Office were reckoned at £171,836. 2s. 9d.—a remarkable reduction on the enormous totals of 1666 [149] . After the accession of James II no less than £305,806 was paid by the Treasurer of the Navy on account of debts incurred in Charles II's reign [150] , so it is not surprising to find that, [44] both in the closing years of Charles II and the earlier years of James II, money was still difficult to get, and the old complaints recur although in a less aggravated form. ”

“ Mary Batelier with us, who was just come to see my wife, and they set me down at my Lord Treasurer’s, and themselves went with the coach into the fields to take the ayre. I staid a meeting of the Duke of Yorke’s, and the officers of the Navy and Ordnance. My Lord Treasurer lying in bed of the gowte. Our business was discourse of the straits of the Navy for want of money, but after long discourse as much out of order as ordinary people’s, we come to no issue, nor any money promised, or like to be had, and yet the worke must be done. ”

“ A court-martial would not enable the Treasurer to pay wages and prize money too long over-due, or silence men of whom one, who knew them well, said that they were ‘an unruly and untamed generation,’ and that he found ‘no hope to satisfy them without their full pay.’ [1294] But there are signs that, notwithstanding delays in payment, the men gave heartier obedience to the Commonwealth than they had given to the crown under similar circumstances. ”

“ Other authorities give a larger number of men, in one instance 15,925; and only 95 merchantmen appear in the Audit Office Accounts as paid by the Treasurer. In this case the in and out working must have puzzled the authorities considerably, but ordinarily experience had enabled them to calculate with fair accuracy the probable cost of sending a fleet to sea. In October 1580—Drake had returned in September and Mendoza was vapouring—such an estimate was prepared for twenty men-of-war, to be manned by 4030 seamen and gunners, and 1690 soldiers. ”

“ The office, in fact, grew, as has been commonly the case with our administrative machinery, by adaptations to meet needs. At last, in 1546, in the year before his death, the king formed the first regular Navy Board by letters patent dated April 24. It consisted of a Lieutenant of the Admiralty, a Treasurer, a Comptroller, a Surveyor, a Clerk of the Ships, and two officials who had no special title. ”

“ Another form of fraud which came into existence now, and lasted till the present century, was the forging and uttering of seamen’s tickets. The tickets were practically promises to pay wages due, and in the state of the royal treasury were only saleable at a heavy discount. Not only did the captains and pursers forge tickets in the names of men who had never existed, but civilians carried on a brisk trade in such articles, and, when Crowe was Navy Treasurer, they were ‘such good merchandise that a penniless wag made out a ticket for Ball, a dog ... ”

“ And be it further enacted, That the Treasurer of the United States shall disburse all such moneys as shall have been previously or ordered for the use of the War and Navy Departments by warrants from the treasury, which disbursements shall be made pursuant to warrants drawn by the Secretary of the War and Navy Departments respectively, countersigned by the second comptroller, and registered by the auditors respectively. ”

“ Baker had a pension of £40 a year, besides his Exchequer fee and payments from the Navy Treasurer. Bright had one shilling and eightpence a day which had been originally given to Richard Chapman for building the Ark Royal, and had been continued in whole or part to him. Pett’s Exchequer fee had been retained in the family since it was first granted in the second year of Mary’s reign. [920] Probably the orthodox scale of wages would not alone have retained these men in the royal service and the pensions were used to make their posts more valuable. ”

“ Death and other accidents soon altered the arrangement of the Navy Board as appointed by Henry VIII. Robert Legge, the first Treasurer by patent, died some time in 1548, and his accounts determined on 29th September. He was succeeded by Benjamin Gonson, although Gonson’s Letters Patent bear the date of 8th July 1549. ”

“ Considering the already vast and daily increasing commerce of the country, apart from the exposure to hostile inroad of an extended seaboard, all that relates to the Navy is calculated to excite particular attention. Whatever tends to add to its efficiency without entailing unnecessary charges upon the Treasury is well worthy of your serious consideration. ”

“ In like manner the estimate of appropriations for the Navy Department will present an aggregate sum of upward of $3,000,000. About half of these, however, covers the current expenditures of the Navy in actual service, and half constitutes a fund of national property, the pledge of our future glory and defense. It was scarcely one short year after the close of the late war, and when the burden of its expenses and charges was weighing heaviest upon the country, that Congress, by the act of April 29th, 1816, appropriated $1,000,000 annually for eight years to the gradual increase of the Navy. ”

“ While I am distinctly in favor of consistently pursuing the policy we have inaugurated of building up a thorough and efficient Navy, I can not refrain from the suggestion that the Congress should carefully take into account the number of unfinished vessels on our hands and the depleted condition of our Treasury in considering the propriety of an appropriation at this time to begin new work. ”

“ When this takes place, the men generally transfer their whole kit at once, see their names placed on the new ship's books, and obtain what is called "long-leave" of absence to visit their friends, after depositing a portion of their ready money in the hands of the commanding-officer until their return. These men almost always form a valuable part of a ship's crew, and, I am convinced, the practice will become more general of removing direct from one man-of-war to another, whenever the system of frequent payments shall be established in the Navy. ”

“ Revenue cutters are armed cruisers. Naval discipline, drill, and routine prevail on all the ships. Their officers are commissioned, and their men enlisted, like officers and men in the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps. The Secretary of the Treasury assigns them to a particular vessel, and the vessel is usually assigned to a particular station. But he may make such transfer of an officer from one vessel to another, and of the vessel from one station to another, as he deems desirable. ”

“ I feel bound to impress upon the attention of Congress the necessity of continued progress in, the reconstruction of the Navy. The condition of the public Treasury, as I have already intimated, makes the present an auspicious time for putting this branch of the service in a state of efficiency.
It is no part of our policy to create and maintain a Navy able to cope with that of the other great powers of the world.
We have no wish for foreign conquest, and the peace which we have long enjoyed is in no seeming danger of interruption. ”

“ The United States Government fleet is transporting a large amount of freight and reducing its drain on the Treasury. The Shipping Board is constantly under pressure, to which it too often yields, to protect private interests, rather than serve the public welfare. More attention should be given to merchant ships as an auxiliary of the Navy. The possibility of including their masters and crews in the Naval Reserve, with some reasonable compensation, should be thoroughly explored as a method of encouraging private operation of shipping. Public operation is not a success. ”

“ The highest officer in the service is a captain, his pay $2500 a year—but a sorry reward for a lifetime of arduous labor at sea, during which the officer may have been in frequent peril of his life, knowing all the time that for death in the discharge of duty, the Government will pay no pension to his heirs unless the disaster occurred while he was "cooperating with the navy." In one single year the records of the revenue service show more than one hundred lives saved by its activity, without taking into consideration those on vessels warned away from dangerous points by cutters. ”

“ It only remains to declare distinctly, that the country will repose in the consciousness of right, without the wanton excess of supporting soldiers, lazy consumers of the fruits of the earth, who might do the State good service in the various departments of useful industry.
What is the use of the Navy of the United States? The annual expense of our Navy, during recent years, has been upward of six millions of dollars. For what purpose is this paid? Not for the apprehension of pirates; for frigates and ships of the line are of too great bulk to be of service for this purpose. ”

“ Thus more than five hundred ships must do a profitable business, in order to earn a sufficient sum to sustain this little fleet. Still further, taking a received estimate of the value of the mercantile marine of the United States at forty millions of dollars, we find that it is only a little more than six times the annual cost of the navy ”

“ For who is going to deny, when we all stand up for them, that the Merchant Navy shall be incorporated in the Navy of the Nation and with all the rights and money and rank and uniform and widows’ pensions and pensions in old age? All this has to come; and I am Mr. Havelock Wilson’s colleague in that matter, as he was mine in that wonderful feeding and clothing of our thousands of British Merchant sailor prisoners, who didn’t, for some damned red tape reason, come within the scope of the millions of money in that enormous Prince of Wales’s Fund, and the Red Cross. ”

“ In this matter the financial secretary plays a large part, and is directed to assist the spending department of the admiralty in their duty of watching the progress of their liabilities and disbursements. Some notes on admiralty finance will be found below (section 4) . The shipbuilding votes set the larger machinery of the admiralty in motion. The executive departments, except in regard to the hulls and machinery of ships and the special requirements of the director of works, do not make purchases of stores, that work resting with the director of navy contracts. ”

“ Naval officers are not trained business men. It is doubtful whether they could remedy all these defects of administration even if given a free hand. It is certain, however, that they are ready to work toward the end of economy and efficiency, and if the business men of the country will take a real interest we will have a business-like administration of the Navy which will mean the saving of millions of dollars to taxpayers. ”

“ Let it suffice to remark that already the nation has a direct financial interest in the great steamship lines, through its mail subsidies and Admiralty loans with corresponding claims for service in war; that intellectually the nation, by its pride in its magnificent mercantile fleet, regards it as a national possession, and declines to consider our shipping as the mere private property of the shareholders of the steamship companies; and finally, that our navy is maintained at enormous public expense expressly to protect the mercantile fleet, which at present is mainly private property. ”

“ On July 30th he wrote to Captain G. V. Fox, of the Navy Department:
“In a letter I wrote the Secretary of the Treasury on the 11th of May last I used these words, viz.: ‘For the government to send at once a confidential agent to England, with a competent naval officer, to obtain from the British government by purchase, or otherwise, some of the improved steam gun-boats and other vessels to protect our commerce and to assist in blockading Southern ports.’ ”
It was at this time that his firm in New York wrote to him that a debt of $1800 had been paid and that $1000 was in silver. ”