BETWEEN 1788 and 1807, there were four major parliamentary inquiries which delved into the workings of the Victualling Board and victualling office: the Fees Commission, the Select Committee on Finance, the Commission of Naval Inquiry, and the Board of Revision. The parts of these reports which cover the salary and wages systems for the Victualling Board, its clerical and yard staff and a fraud in the cooperage at Plymouth, have already been discussed; here we are concerned with those parts which cover better management.

Fees commission

After much procrastination, one of the recommendations in the Fees reports, that of splitting the Navy Board into committees, was passed by the Privy Council in 1796, but it was not until 1799 and 1800 that the recommendations to abolish the fee systems in the Navy and Victualling boards were adopted; the new pay system for the Victualling Board was effected by an Order in Council dated 29 January 1800. The other recommendations in the eighth report of the Fees commissioners, those on the head office of the Victualling Board and its yards at home, seem to have been either tacitly ignored or rejected as unworkable. These included splitting the Board into committees, attending to the arrears of accounts, preventing the clerks in the office acting as agents for naval officers and contractors, and preventing fraudulent practices in the yards. The commissioners found no real fault with the accounting systems, but were less than complimentary on the management abilities of the Victualling commissioners, in particular that their control over the yard at Deptford was ‘rather nominal than real’.

Select Committee on Finance

In the intervening years, the inquiry of the Select Committee on Finance had taken place. Its report on the Victualling Board, as had the reports on fees, found little fault with the accounting systems, but did emphasise the need to put the recommendations of those reports into effect. However, as before, little was done in response to this.