1624 – Monson’s Tracts Describe Basic Asset Management
In 1585 at the age of 16, William Monson ran away to sea as a privateer. Later, in the English Navy, he served during the defeat of the Spanish Armada. He was a ship captain, squadron commander, admiral, and eventually a member of parliament. Wikipedia quotes the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica in calling him the “first naval officer in the modern sense of the word.” Monson is most famous as an early historian of the Royal Navy.
Monson’s Tracts are a collection of essays written between 1624 and his death in 1643. The essays were not printed until 1682 and were finally published in 1704. The Tracts contain detailed accounts of the Royal Navy’s battles, tactics, voyages, and expeditions.
Monson’s Tracts also recorded the management structure of the dockyards, duties of specific positions, and some repair management practices of the late 1620s to 1630s. Monson criticized graft, waste, and bad management that reduced the navy’s capabilities.
Fixed Asset Inventories
Monson wrote that the Surveyor of the navy was responsible for an annual survey of all the ships, boats, wharves, and dockyard facilities. The survey included the condition of each asset and the cost to repair it. Shipwrights and other technical specialists assisted the Surveyor with this inventory. (Monson’s Tracts, p. 323 of the 1704 edition)
A clerk reporting to the Surveyor had to conduct an assessment of a ship’s hull and stores whenever a ship returned from sea in order to plan for repair. If a ship had to enter a port that was not its normal home and did not have government repair facilities, the surveyor was to travel to the ship to make an assessment of the repair. The priority was to return the ship to the normal dockyard for a permanent repair. (Monson p. 324)
The requirement for a written hull survey upon return to port would be retained in Navy regulations for at least 237 years. The requirement was printed in every revision of the regulations up to 1861. By the 1906 regulations, the requirement had evolved into keeping a continuous, prioritized list of defects updated by periodic inspections.
Monson also recorded the practice of an inventory that included a state of wear:
At the return of any ship from sea he is, with one of the masters attendant and a master shipwright, for things in their elements, to survey the remnants of all stores returned, and to note down all particular qualities — to be half worn, or fourth part worn, or decayed, according as the master shall judge them to be useful for the King’s service. And thereupon he is to make up the account of waste in the voyage, and to dispose the remainder to be returned into the King’s store, or left in the ship, as shall best accommodate the King’s service.
(Monson p. 413)
During the next two centuries, Navy regulations also continued to require an assessment of stores upon return from sea.
Qualifications of Technical Officers
Monson thought that the Surveyor’s responsibilities were too broad. One person was unlikely to know the details of both sailing and shipbuilding. He thought that two people should be Surveyor: an experienced shipwright and a sailing master. When a single person was assigned as the surveyor, management of one of the subjects would be weaker. (Monson p. 327) During the 44 years between 1598 to 1642, a trained shipbuilder was the Surveyor for a total of only 6 years. (Thrush p. 82-84) The navy deputized commercial shipbuilders to conduct technical surveys, but there was no payment for this service. Navy administrators often received technical advice that was uninterested, uninformed, hasty, or simply wrong.
Preserving Hulls
Monson recorded the duties of specific ship officers. The Carpenter “looks to the hull, that there be no damage by leaks.” The Carpenter was the primary commissioned officer responsible for hull maintenance. He was also responsible for the strength of masts and the repair of boats. (Monson p. 345)
Monson compared several methods of sheathing to protect the hull against shipworm. He described how shipworms bored long holes into the wood, reducing strength and watertightness. He discussed several methods of sheathing to protect against shipworm, comparing the effectiveness and cost of different methods. This shows that practical hull preservation was of interest to the Navy. (Monson p. 347)
Monson related that the Spanish and Portuguese used lead sheathing, but that lead was not durable and prone to damage. Using two layers of planking was effective and durable, but heavy. He listed other options. The hull could be charred, oiled, smeared with pitch, or layered with canvas. Monson noted that in China, an artificial varnish was used. His recommendation for the best preservation for the least cost was a layer of tar and hair, covered with a half-inch thick layer of elm plank. This remained standard practice in the English navy until copper sheathing was successfully fielded 150 years later in the late 1700s. The Royal Navy of the 1620s was aware of other methods of protecting the hull, but chose this preventive sheathing system based on a combination of practicality, their technical capability, availability of materials, durability, and overall cost.
“Miſmanagement” – Proposed Management Reforms
Monson proposed reforms to improve the management of the navy. He recommended selecting people based on qualification and character, instead of family connections. Key appointments were often given to people with no experience, driven by social and political connections and bribery. The more seasoned staff manipulated the inexperienced appointees for personal gain. Monson accused the former Lord High Admiral, Earl of Nottingham, of starting this practice, allowing the purchase of official positions for 1500 pounds (Monson p. 371)
Most of Monson’s reform recommendations involved oversight of spending authority so that resources would not be wasted. Public servants would not grow rich while their official duties suffered. One proposal was an officer whose responsibility would be to oversee the expenses incurred by the Carpenter, Boatswain, and Gunner…essentially, an internal auditor.
Pay for Performance
Monson used two interesting terms in his tracts: “ill management” and “miſmanagement,” spelled using the archaic long s that resembles the letter f.
One example of “miſmanagement” was that sailors were paid the same regardless of their competence. Monson’s solution was surprisingly modern: pay for performance. He proposed that the ship’s officers could raise a high performing sailor’s pay. The “loyterers” would have their pay decreased so that the manpower expense stayed flat…a cost-neutral performance incentive.
1637 – Definition of Leakage
Historian Andrew Thrush investigated the state of the English Navy in the years 1625-1640. He found that the system for administering the Navy varied considerably in effectiveness during this period. Some ships were in excellent condition after long service, but some were plagued by maintenance problems. Thrush concluded that the main factors injuring the fleet’s readiness were unstable budgets and interruption of supply chains for repair materials. The Thirty Years’ War began in 1618 and disrupted the supply of replacement masts and ropes from Poland. Without access to quality parts, dockyards used substitute materials. This resulted in frequent repairs and unreliable operations.
The Royal Navy had a constant need for maintenance. Irregular cash flow limited access to the right supplies. Hard decisions had to be made – the result was deferred maintenance. In correspondence of the day, this was called “negligence.” Official complaints often recorded the details of this negligence and included the expectations of what maintenance should have been done.
Sometime around 1625, Henry Mainwaring published the first dictionary of nautical terms in English. He recorded definitions of “seepage” and “leakage.” Seepage was minor ingress of water through joints and caulking. Seepage was normal, but leakage was a failure. Mainwaring defined leakage as a rate of water requiring a hundred strokes of the ship’s pump in 24-48 hours. (Manwaring Vol 1, p. 71) This technical definition is similar to modern definitions of “flooding” and “leakage” in a US Navy submarine: leakage is within the drain pump’s capacity, but flooding is more than the drain pump can remove. Leakage needs a repair, but flooding is an action word that kicks off emergency procedures. (Author’s experience)
[Note: Sir Henry Mainwaring’s (1587-1653) dictionary was reprinted in a larger collection of his works edited by George Ernest Manwaring (1882-1939) of the Naval Records Society in 1922. The name spellings are very close and sometimes inconsistent in earlier texts.]
Thrush gave an example of what was possible with state-of-the-art shipbuilding and quality maintenance. In 1626 the Happy Entrance sprang a leak after nine months at sea. Until then the crew only had to operate the dewatering pump every four or five weeks.
Thrush used Mainwaring’s definition to review complaints of leaks recorded in letters between captains and officials. 17th century investigations found different causes: poor quality work at the dockyard, storm damage, and operator error. In one case a crew had accidentally punctured their hull with their own anchor, then complained about the leakage.
1638 – Root Cause Found to be “Ye Negligence”
Nine years later, frequent complaints about leaks caused alarm in the navy’s management. The 24-gun Mary Rose, named after the earlier, more famous ship, leaked immediately after sailing from the yard. Admiral Algernon Percy, the 10th Earl of Northumberland, accused dockyards of being negligent. The Navy Board explained that minor defects could never be all be detected:
The cause hereof is presupposed to be in ye negligence of the caulkers, which we have made strickt inquirie into, and for ought wee can be informed…most of all of those leakes grew from such defects in ye ships as the narrowest observation could not prevent; as in the Marirose, though upon complaint twice caulked, yet till shee came into ye docke the leak could not possiblie be found, and then by the issuing of the water it was discerned by her keele just under the Well, and the hole not bigg enough to put a man’s little finger into, which till so discovered the witt of man could not foresee or prevent; but yet it hath occasioned a strickter oversight of ye caulkers and carpenters.
(Thrush p. 343)
In modern terms, the government conducted a root cause investigation. The construction facility did warranty work twice. On the third repair attempt, the defect was found and corrected. The builder contended that the problem was so small that no inspection method could have found it. However, the builder improved quality inspection procedures as a corrective action.
The explanation was not satisfactory and the King agreed with the Earl that the dockyards had been negligent. A few months later, the ship Fifth Whelp was lost at sea by some combination of rushed construction with green wood and the deferred repairs. The Earl’s point was proved.
1630s – Infrastructure Versus Vanity Projects
In 1638, King Charles appointed the Earl of Northumberland to be Lord High Admiral, filling the post left vacant since the murder of the Duke of Buckingham. Northumberland pursued reforms in pay, management of the navy budget, pay, and the logistics of food for the fleet. In 1636, he had proposed that the fleet be downsized to be more effective, and proposed significant investments in structural repairs to the remaining ships, writing that:
Divers [many] of your Majesty’s ships are so old and decayed that the repair of them is a great and continual charge, and the ships are able to do little service.
(Hodges p. 48)
Northumberland recognized that some of his fleet were beyond their economic service life. For some bad actors, repairs were expensive and continual. These ships were not effective combat units. The government needed to dispose of these assets and reinvest the savings into the maintainable ones.
King Charles I involved himself more directly in the Navy under Northumberland than he had under Buckingham. (Thrush p. 29-33) The King was knowledgeable about naval matters, but drove some bad spending decisions, particularly regarding the Sovereign of the Seas. (Thrush p. 182) On the international stage, Charles I claimed ownership of international waters. The King was sending a clear diplomatic signal with Sovereign of the Seas, starting with the name. This ship was intended to demonstrate that the crown of England owned all the world’s oceans as a matter of law, a theory called Mare Clausum.
Charles I demanded the shipbuilders install more guns on Sovereign of the Seas. This gave England the first ship in the world to mount 100 guns. The ship was also lavishly decorated. The extra carvings and gun mounts cost the same as a second ship of a standard design. The expensive ship was impractical and robbed resources from other projects.
Charles I overrode Phineaus Pett on the launch date of Sovereign of the Seas. Pett wanted to launch the new flagship only when it was needed to avoid a winter cycle of docking and hull cleaning. The King wanted the ship launched immediately. (Thrush p. 38)
The King delayed the decision to build a dry dock in Portsmouth for several years to redirect money to his projects. Thrush concluded he “preferred to squander precious resources on a single battleship than spend a few thousand pounds on the less glamorous but more vital task of improving the Navy’s dockyard facilities.” The Sovereign of the Seas was a diplomatic asset as well as a naval asset, and the King’s international strategy overrode practical considerations of asset management.
Thrush gave another example of the king’s decision making, but without the international politics: “The vast sums heaped upon the rebuilding of the 1200-ton Prince Royal is a case in point. In 1637 the Principal Officers urged her replacement on the grounds that a rebuild would be prohibitively expensive, but Charles ignored this sound advice. The final bill came to £17,450, although the Officers had thought even £14,000 was excessive.”
Disagreements or misunderstandings about the end of service life, modernization priorities, and geopolitics drove large spending decisions that sometimes seemed wasteful to the maintainer. The US Navy had similar debates about modernization or retirement of aging guided-missile cruisers in the 2010s and 2020s. The US Navy submitted budgets repeatedly that would have decommissioned the cruisers, so that the money for their operation, maintenance, and modernization could be used for development of new systems. These plans were routinely overridden by the US Congress. (Author’s experience)
In both the 17th-century English and 21st-century American cases, central government authorities wanted a different force structure than the professional navy officers who had to maintain and employ the assets.
The 1630s saw worsening relations with Dutch (Thrush p. 9). Another naval problem was pirates from North Africa raiding British coast for slaves. Between 1616 and 1642, corsairs took an estimated 350-400 ships and 6500-7000 men from Britain (Lea-O’Mahoney p. 17). Charles I needed to control the English Channel, protect the coast, and challenge the maritime influence of the Netherlands, France, and Spain. However, Charles’ relationship with Parliament was not good, so his security priorities were not well-funded.
The Sovereign of the Seas was launched in 1637 and was intended by King Charles to be an international statement about the English crown’s ownership of what we now think of as international waters. It was the first English ship to mount over 100 cannon and was elaborately decorated. The Sovereign of the Seas cost ten times what a normal 40-gun ship cost, but only had twice the firepower. The cost of decoration alone was equal to a single frigate. Parliament did not support King Charles I’s naval policies, so the King had to fund some of his projects without Parliamentary appropriations. The drain on resources was so large that mismanagement of every other part of the navy was the result. (Thrush p. 200)
The main method to raise this money was a special tax called Ship Money. Ship Money was a sovereign right, which the King could impose without Parliament’s approval. Parliament abolished Ship Money in 1641, and the English Civil War began in 1642. Overuse of Ship Money to maintain a large fleet and build the Sovereign of the Seas was one of the causes of the English Civil War. Early in the war, most of the navy sided with Parliament. Lea-O’Mahoney found that this limited the King’s blockade options and was a major factor in the outcome of the war.
By 1642, the English navy had 2 periods of investment under Henry VIII and Charles I. Both growth periods were succeeded by decay of the assets, then a multi-year plan to correct the situation.
Food and Payroll Competed with Maintenance
Thrush described some of the navy’s other immediate and practical problems unrelated to maintenance or shipbuilding that were related to underfunding in the period of 1622-1640. Mostly these had to do with human resources and the irregularity of government payments.
To complete their crews, the navy competed for skilled mariners with a commercial sector that offered higher pay. Prize money was not made a normal incentive until 1642. Before this, real money could only be in privateering.
The navy had trouble making payroll. Sailors went unpaid for long periods, compounding the problem of recruitment and retention. The conditions of service encouraged desertion. The navy could resort to impressment, but this also encouraged desertion. Impressment targeted mariners in coastal towns, so towns emptied of male residents when the navy was around. Thrush related that in 1628 the Bristol Member of Parliament tried to refuse naval protection, because the disruption to commerce by men avoiding impressment was worse for the economy than the risk of piracy or foreign attack. Impressed sailors often arrived with only the clothes they wore, and the navy did not yet provide uniforms. Because they were paid infrequently and had few chances to buy their own clothing, there were complaints of unclothed sailors suffering medically from exposure to weather.
Another acute problem was food and drink. The government fed the sailors on board ship, so it had to purchase large quantities of supplies. Relationships with contractors and vendors were poor because they were also paid irregularly. Goods that were received by the navy were often of poor quality or stored for long enough to spoil.
Captains and navy officials sometimes had to use their own money to accomplish their goals. Thrush gave fourteen examples of this. The Duke of Buckingham had spent £53,000 of his own money funding naval operations. After his murder, the navy still owed his estate £17,390. Other examples are smaller, but still range from £200 to £3000, mostly from officials managing the logistics of food.
Good management of weapons should be expected from armed services, but this was not the case. Thrush concluded that the ordnance system was so bad that it barely functioned. In contrast to the navy’s correspondence, the ordnance department records were so unreliable and disorganized that Thrush found they could barely be studied. The office was understaffed, overworked, also had to equip the army, and often received last-minute rush orders from the navy. Thrush quoted another historian’s characterization:
“The Office ‘retained that evil pre-eminence in sloth and incapacity it had already earned’,” Aylmer has commented that ‘supplies and weapons were usually late in arriving’. The Duke of Buckingham commented on the performance in 1627: ‘that there is not yt quicknes and readynes used by the office of the stores and lyverles as is answerable to the hast[e] required’.
(Thrush p. 330)
The ordnance office had supplied gun-carriages to forts and ships that rotted quickly. A 1628 investigation concluded that rushed construction with green, unseasoned timber was the root cause. The problem of green timber had already been remarked on by the 1608 naval commission, and it foreshadowed another timber crisis that nearly affected the outcome of Trafalgar in 1805.
Because captains and admirals had to manage unpaid, underfed crews and poorly equipped ships with their own money, it is surprising that they would have paid any attention at all to maintenance of their ship or its lifecycle.
In a letter, on March 29, 1666, an administrator wrote asking for a decision about scheduling a ship for a hull cleaning. Disgusted with their performance, he vented about a ship’s officers:
The Delft is arrived from Jersey. The Captain tells me she is very foul: it’s about 5 months since he was cleansed here; his victuals is spent and long boat lost: few ships goeth out but lose their boats. I never saw or heard of so little care as now is found generally of almost all the officers in general: they act as if it were their duty to destroy rather than to preserve. Pray advise whether the Delft shall come in to clean or not.
(Hodges p. 85)
Faced with such daily problems and a civil war, it is surprising that anyone in the English navy in the 17th century could spare time to improve maintenance management. Yet, the practices common in this period would provide a basis for a maintenance system that would be formalized in writing in the next 50 years and improved over the next 200 years.
References
Monson’s Tracts, 1703 version: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/nyp.33433009405741
Monson’s Tracts, 1913 version: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/njp.32101075683498
Thrush, A.D.; (1991) The Navy Under Charles I: 1625-40. Doctoral thesis, University of London.
https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1317789/
Mainwaring’s nautical dictionary is reprinted in:
W. G. Perrin and G. E. Manwaring. The Life And Works of Sir Henry Mainwaring Vol. 2. [London]: Navy Records Society, 1922.
https://hdl.handle.net/2027/pst.000023969797
Testimony of Sir Henry Mainwaring concerning leakage, bad management, and potential reforms:
Manwaring, Henry, Sir, 1587-1653, and G. E. (George Ernest) Manwaring. The Life And Works of Sir Henry Mainwaring Vol. 1. [London]: Navy Records Society, Vol. 54, 1920.
https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015039446490?urlappend=%3Bseq=272
Hodges, Harold Winter, and Edward Arthur Hughes. Select Naval Documents. Cambridge [Eng.]: University Press, 1922. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/coo1.ark:/13960/t3902pz3f
Pg 79, 81-82
Lea-O’Mahoney, Michael James, The Navy in the English Civil War Thesis, University of Exeter, 2011 https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/bitstream/handle/10036/4078/Lea-O%27MahoneyM.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y
I have referred to my own experience for two references:
Definitions of flooding and leakage in US submarines: in 2005, qualification as Diving Officer of the Watch on the submarine USS ALABAMA. The Diving Officer of the Watch has immediate actions for safety of ship upon receiving a report of flooding.
US Navy’s attempts to decommission TICONDEROGA-class cruisers: 2010-2013, as a staff officer for US Fleet Forces Command, I rebalanced US Navy budgets for ship maintenance spending in response to US Senate markups of the President’s Budget. The Department of the Navy, Department of Defense, and President’s Budget requests all included plans to stop maintenance and decommission four cruisers. The Senate Armed Services Committee included language that prohibited the DOD from spending money to prepare these ships for decommissioning, so maintenance had to continue. More than ten years later, this debate between the US Congress and US Navy about force structure still continues. See:
https://news.usni.org/2022/04/21/navy-plans-for-all-22-ticonderoga-cruisers-to-exit-fleet-in-5-years
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